Caretas project

Updated May 05, 2020

Caretas project

Part of United Nations Children's Fund

https://www.unicef.org/brazil/projeto-caretas

Gabriela Mora

UNICEF engaged 1.2 million people in an interactive storytelling experience on GBV, in which young people exchange messages on Facebook with a fictional character named Fabi Grossi, who has experienced nonconsensual sharing of her intimate images.

UNICEF partnered with Facebook, using the company’s mobile application Messenger to implement a project called Caretas, which was piloted several times at a local school and then with a limited number of anonymous Internet users. Participants engaged with a fictitious person called Fabi who shared her story of betrayal and invited her audience to start a conversation. During the anonymous onlin...

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Stage 4: Transition to Scale

1.2 million people have already participated in this initiative through Facebook Messenger. Based on lessons learned from this experience UNICEF started implementing workshops with adolescents and public policy managers on how to combat online GBV.

Focus Areas:

Gender-based Violence, Soft or Life Skills and Child Protection

1,200,000

Lives Impacted to Date

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Problem

The nonconsensual sharing of intimate images has led states, corporations and civil society organizations to create solutions to support victims, usually women and girls, and punish offenders. In Brazil, the topic began to gain the spotlight in newspapers in 2013, when Júlia Rebeca, a 17-year-old girl in the state of Piauí, committed suicide after an intimate video of her was shared on the Internet without her consent. After this case, several reports of nonconsensual image sharing emerged.

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Solution

- Explore other uses of Artificial Intelligence to combat online GBV affecting girls - Implement workshops with adolescents on how to combat online GBV and foster peer-education - Support the implementation of peer-education strategies and foster the participation of public policy managers and teachers to strengthen girls’ support networks. - Train adolescent- champions in communications skills so they can act as digital influencers among their peers to prevent and combat online GBV.

Target Beneficiaries

Adolescents and young people

Mission and Vision

Using artificial intelligence, a character is programmed to interact with young people, conducting conversations based on the various phases faced by those who are victims of online GBV. Fabi Grossi helps internauts deal with the initial despair felt when faced with this problem and provides orientation about their rights and how to handle the situation. The second phase of this project consists in workshops on how to combat online GBV and disseminate knowledge through peer-education.

Competitive Advantage

Users were presented with questions to quickly assess the project. Almost 300,000 people completed the questionnaire, most of them were women (75%) between the ages of 13 and 25 years. Over 90% thought the initiative was good or very good; almost half reported having already talked about the topic or practiced sexting; and 92% said they had learned more about the topic by participating in the project.

Planned Goals and Milestones

- Workshops with 800 adolescents in 10 cities - 8,000 adolescents with information on how to prevent and combat online GBV via peer-education strategies - 10 adolescent champions trained to act as digital influencers and influencing 15,000 adolescents on how to prevent and combat online GBV - Create an Artificial Intelligence influencer to reach 1,500,000 adolescents and young people