South Africa has one of the highest incidences of gender-based violence against women in the world! Research shows that every six hours a woman in South Africa is killed by her intimate partner. We were tasked with creating a press campaign that highlights these unknown and alarming statistics.

Most occurrences of domestic abuse against South African women are enacted by their intimate partners at home. This fact lead us to our insight - women who are abused in their homes, feel safer in places we would normally perceive as dangerous. To illustrate this, our executions portrayed women comfortably doing everyday house chores in dangerous environments.

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We launched the Safe At Home campaign in the press in order to draw attention to the horrifying statistics, and direct abused women to where they can find help. We then supported it on social media over the weekend of International Women’s Day to get the message home.

On social media we managed to secure earned media coverage from many local and international online publications. This generated brand awareness for POWA and more importantly started a conversation about gender-based violence in the media. The hashtag was also utilised to continue the conversation on various channels. According to POWA spokesperson, the campaign caused an immediate increase in phone calls from women asking for assistance. These women were then able to learn more, and implement options such as protection orders, how to open cases, divorce applications and also temporary shelter.

The campaign generated significant brand awareness for POWA not only to the public, but also to the women who were most in need of their assistance.

To get a good scope of the situation, consider The South African Medical Research Council findings: between 1999 and 2009 South Africa’s general murder rate decreased but the incidences of women killed by their intimate partners increased by 50 - 57%. This is a probable underestimate as no perpetrator is identified in 20% of the killings. Further research indicates that even though there are policies to protect women in abusive relationships they are seldom enforced. Many perpetrators walk free. Women are losing faith in the system and no longer know where to seek help. It's a huge problem.

The media in South Africa plays a crucial role in addressing gender-based violence. Our role is to create more awareness around intimate partner violence in the media. We also need to direct women in abusive relationships to organisations like POWA who will assist them with domestic violence before its too late. Our job is not only to inspire change but to keep issues of gender-based violence on the nation’s agenda. The Safety At Home campaign is a small step in proving that the right information can shift the mindsets and behaviours that lead to gender-based violence.

People Opposing Women Abuse is an NGO that aims to create a safer society that does not tolerate violence against women but rather aims to create a society filled with women who are self reliant, powerful, equal and respected. They are a feminist, women’s rights organisation providing assistance to women,and engaging in advocacy to ensure the realisation of women’s rights.

We were tasked to create a press campaign that launched around International Women's Day drawing attention to the hardcore fact that a woman in South Africa is killed by her intimate partner at home every six hours. The general public are not aware of these alarming statistics and often turn a blind eye to women abuse. So the objective of the campaign was to achieve three things. The first was to draw attention to the shocking reality of women abuse at home and femicide in South Africa. The second was to encourage people to act against domestic violence and the third was to direct abused women to POWA.