Abused women in Italy have been suffering from continuing cut to funds for anti-violence centers for years, and the situation was made worse during the pandemic as violence against women increased by 119%.

Women, being let down by the institutions, had come up with ways to save themselves, some calling the police pretending to order a pizza.

ActionAid, a non-profit association, is protesting against this situation, drawing the attention of people, the press and institutions on this issue with Call4Margherita;

a pizza box becomes a direct carrying the message aimed at convincing the institutions to increase funds for the fight against gender violence.

In Italy, on the 3nd of August 2020, the country's attention was drawn to the news of a woman who called the police pretending to order a pizza to save herself from her violent partner. And she was not the only one to resort to this expedient. This gave rise to the idea: to turn the pizza, which became a tool to save one's life, into one to protest against the situation.

ActionAid's strategy was to launch the Call4Margherita campaign on November 25, The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. By using actual pizza orders we wanted to create awareness on the problem. So, we turned pizza boxes into a direct. The boxes tell the story of how several women managed to save themselves by calling the police pretending to order a pizza. This campaign generated a vibrant conversation on social media. We delivered these boxes all over Italy, even to the highest institutions of the country to whom we asked to allocate more funds for this cause.

With the campaign Call4Margherita we turned pizza boxes into a media. Telling the story of Margherita, 35, that during the lockdown pretended to order a pizza to save herself from her violent partner.

Many pizza restaurants joined the campaign and thousands ordered pizza, posting stories on social media asking institutions to do something about it and allocate more funds to the cause. And we brought the message to the highest offices of the State, which for the first time allocated more funds to the fight against gender-based violence.

in 24H?

+ 248% visits to actionaid.it

53mln impressions

82k engagement

1800 UGC content on TikTok?

11 mln views on TikTok?

The government allocated extra 4 million euros for 2021.