This is my second year organizing the “16 Days of Activism” Campaign for the Women’s and Gender Resource Center. I truly do enjoy the planning portion of it and getting to be creative with the different activities for each day. For those who don’t know, “16 Days of Activism” is a campaign designed by the United Nations to bring attention to gender-based violence. The campaign consists of 16 days of events and includes coverage on social media. This year I decided to make it a social media campaign because I believed it would be most effective in a generation where most of us are connected to the Internet.

The campaign is a great one for a college campus specifically because issues like gender-based violence aren’t often discussed and some students don’t feel comfortable speaking up. That’s why I thought it would be ideal to implement a group discussion for our final event. Students being able to have the space to give their opinion or share their personal experience is very important for a campaign like this. The goal of the campaign is to bring awareness but to also support those who are currently going through gender-based violence or have in their past.

I enjoy getting to organize the campaign because I always learn something new; this year having the opportunity to facilitate a discussion is very rewarding. I believe that every year more students on campus will become more involved with and aware of the campaign. Being able to take part in it is an experience and a learning process I have enjoyed.

Written by Zina Ettangi ’20, WGRC student worker