13 years ago, Honduras became the only country in Latin America to ban the morning after pill. Already one of the most conservative countries in the region, this single act represented a massive step backwards for women’s rights and wellbeing, with predictable results: Since then, 330,000 underage girls have become mothers. Today, one out of every four Honduran women and girls will become pregnant before turning 18, fully half raped by the men closest to them.

GE PAE (Grupo Estratégico Pastilla Anticonceptiva Emergencia) is a non-governmental organization that has fought for over a decade to repeal the prohibition, facing serious headwinds: no media budget, no support from the private sector, zero institutionalized sexual health education (allowing the spread of constant misinformation and cultivating taboo), and a conservative national media in bed with the same religious leaders that call women murderers and death cultists when they ask for basic human rights.

Honduran women currently do not have equality. They suffer the second-highest rate of femicide in Latin America. 1 in 4 girls become pregnant before the age of 18, half of which are a result of domestic sexual violence, often leading to forced marriage. With both emergency contraceptives and abortion being illegal, they do not enjoy universal access to their reproductive rights. Many of these restrictions have even been enshrined in the country’s constitution.

A lack of sexual education means that women and girls have no ability to make informed decisions about their sexual health. Misinformation and taboo run rampant, fueled by a powerful conservative establishment. This environment has led to a harsh silencing of women’s voices in national media.

The election of Honduras’s first female President was a long-awaited sign of progress that we were determined to make the most of.

How could we provide a solution for desperate women, without risking their freedom? In the end, the insight was simple: if our rights are denied in our own homeland, why not go where no government or establishment has the power to stop us? After conferring with civil rights legal experts, we decided to look towards international waters.

So came the idea for the Morning After Island. A platform where we could take the morning after pill without fear of prosecution. Where we could raise our voices, be seen and heard by the world, with no one to silence us. Where we could build support and pressure our government for change without retaliation.

First, we would build the platform, safely anchored in international waters outside of Honduran jurisdiction, and organize regular trips and supplies to provide women with a pill— but this was only a short-term solution. Our objective was to pressure the government to repeal the law, and for that, we needed international attention. We decided to focus on the compelling stories of the individual women who used the platform.

We would film these journeys and create short-form videos designed to be irresistible for sharing, with a simple call to action: sign our petition. Our initial target audience would be Millennials and Gen Z, selected for their progressive values and responsiveness to meaningful content. By building the conversation in this way, our action would quickly become newsworthy, allowing us to expand our reach even further by pitching to global newsmedia outlets with a press release, interviews, and multimedia assets.

We built the platform and scheduled regular voyages free of cost to any woman who needed the pill. By bus, by car, and by boat, women in need were given the choice they’d been denied by the government. We then produced the first short video with a female rights activist.

In preparation, our PR team pitched the story to more than fifty social media personalities curated for their strong stances on social issues, as well as dozens of news outlets in Latin America, the US, and Europe. Less than a week after the first video launched, influencers from the US to Argentina to India were calling on their millions of followers to show their support. This initial virality earned coverage from CNN International; from there, the momentum became unstoppable. We’d achieved our main goal: this issue could no longer be silenced by traditional Honduran media or its government officials.

In less than 6 months, we gathered more than 2 million signatures from around the world and created global awareness of Honduran women’s plight. Our efforts earned us what we’d been denied for more than a decade: a seat at the table. President Xiomara Castro invited our group to a formal meeting on International Woman’s Day, where we were able to discuss the issue of the morning after pill. Simultaneously, an all-women session of Congress met to discuss plans to address the many additional problems facing Honduran women. By the end of the day, the government had made a public commitment, including the formation of a new Ministry of Women and a broad legislative proposal defending our sexual, reproductive, and civil rights. In the meantime, the Morning After Island has changed 500+ lives and remains the only choice for more than 3 million Honduran women.