We are delighted to share a blog written by student Eman, from The International Academy-Amman, who is part of team Violent Vision delivering a Global Goals project for the 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
Violet Visions experience with the GSL team has been inspirational and empowering.
Project Summary
All the way emerging from Amman Jordan, hello and thanks for taking the time to read about our project Violet Vision.
Starting off, we decided to take this unfortunate time and develop it into a positive. While many people are fighting this COVID-19 pandemic that seems to be the only issue world representatives focused on, we decided to advocate for change in our community on gender related issues.
Taking a look at our projects accomplishments and aims, we have developed and are producing a docuseries that promotes the unification of males and females, while touching base on important aspects of their lives that are shaped by societal norms. The docuseries is a part of a learning experience for us the Violet Vision team and for viewers, as we find ourselves learning from guests on our docuseries episodes. This in turn gives us, the team, and the public insight to actions we can take to get closer to solving issues related to the lack of gender equality.
We decided to classify genders as violet instead of the normal gender classification of blue for male and pink for female, from this we founded our project anime as mixing blue and pink results in violet. We decided to dedicate our work and project in hope of “meeting in the violet”. Meeting in the violet essentially represents the unification of males and females to work together to end gender dominance.
We saw that there was a need for a project like ours, as there was no project promoting the unification between genders. So we took the opportunity to become the first local project promoting equality through the unification of both genders. While there are many organisations that work towards helping females, Violet Vision is the first to create a local discussion of the importance of both genders combatting this issue.
Our social media presence consists of an Instagram account, a YouTube channel, Twitter, as well as a website that we are working on creating.
In order to build our project and gain a diverse following we promoted female run businesses in Jordan. We decided to partner with a female run business, to which we promote them to our following, especially during this pandemic when small businesses are impacted. We have currently launched 1 collaboration to the public and are working on more collaborations, as a series to help female run businesses.
Not only did it expand our reach onto different people, but we helped a small business during the pandemic. The collaborations opened us up to expand into different sectors depending on our audience. We hope to launch a Violet Vision Merch line near the end of March, to which the profits will be donated to local charities that support struggling females, or to females in need that are looking to pursue academic careers, or start a business.
We hope that our project can grow and aspire people globally to inflict change in their community. We have to take things into our own hands.
Our Journey
Our project started off as a simple topic of interest within our class debates, it then developed into the making of Violet Vision, and our drive to raise awareness about gender inequality and dominance. It would then play a major part in our lives, where we were able to explore the different perspectives around culture and their roles in shaping laws and regulations regarding gender.
Violet Vision has been an exciting project that has taught us a lot about gender inequality in Jordan. From the docuseries we are currently doing, to the questions we ask random people in our community on our social media platform and also from our school community, it all helped us understand the situation and grasp the severity of the issue. As a group we have all developed skills such as communication, research, organization, and decision making. These skills are crucial for building on a project and bringing our group closer together to work in a more synchronized and efficient way to gain and reach larger audiences. Whereas these skills will also be vital in tackling the issue of gender construct and the restricted gender stereotypes that are set within society.
The GSL competition requires leadership and cooperation from members of the group in order to reach a large audience and accomplish change. One of our biggest challenges is increasing the level of engagement within our audiences and delivering our message to people. However, recently we hit 200 followers on our Instagram page growing our cause. COVID-19 has had an immense impact on several initial goals, and due to strict restrictions and safety measures, Violet Vision had to minimize physical interaction and mainly focus on virtual campaigns and initiatives. To which we have started a YouTube channel and have decided to provide access to accounts on Facebook, Twitter along with our YouTube channel and our main platform; Instagram.
Our Next Chapter
By addressing and prompting a discussion of local issues you’re already participating in the solution. However, there is no need to wait around for change to be done, if you wonder why something has not been addressed, you have the ability to address it and formulate options and solutions. Our project takes major steps in addressing these vast issues, and further empowers people to take action regardless of their age or gender.
The specific plan we have in place is to expand the outreach of our project. Having already established the basis of our project as a media based awareness initiative encouraging gender equality, the next logical step would be to move from an audience based primarily of teenagers that are interested in the topic, to the wider Jordanian community.
To achieve the essential mission of our project, we need large, arching influence in our community as well as a bigger audience to resonate the message to. To accomplish this, we will be broadcasting our message to media outlets with a bigger outreach, specifically to audiences we are yet to reach. With that in mind, we have different radio shows, local instagram influencers (such as mummyinamman or Marwan Abdelhamid), as well as local gender rights activists. The material sourced from these interviews will be incorporated into our docuseries to give our project extra breadth and depth. We will also be instigating a local discussion through an organized conference among all interested followers of our project (not necessarily all supporters) in order to discuss gender inequality in our local context. The duality of this two forked approach (both media influence as well as the conference) will hopefully help give us credibility. With this credibility, we look to contact local government representatives, with a flood of local support – through letters, which will help bring gender equality to Jordanian law.
For fellow students, and members of Gen Z, it is prominent that you get involved in world issues and world politics, as it is vital to become aware of the world around you. As well as recognizing the issues that you face daily, and issues that others face as well. Without being informed of events concerning the community around you, you are limiting yourself to be reliant on others to inflict change and assure your living standards. Reality is, you have the potential to inflict change, and help the world accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. We have 9 years left to act, and your presence can inflict change.
Violet Vision hopes to have inspired projects that will blossom, as gender inequality is a global social issue, and by working to solve these issues in communities worldwide, we can solve the issue of gender inequality.
The 2020-21 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2021. If you belong to one of the 500+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
