Signal for Help

Background

The Canadian Women’s Foundation launched 'Signal for Help' in Canada on April 14th, to help combat the increase of gender-based violence as a result of home isolation. 'Signal for Help' was developed as an online initiative and tool designed to provide women who are confined to their homes with their abusers a method to discreetly communicate over any video call that they need help.

Idea

The signal is a simple single-handed gesture that symbolically entraps the thumb in the palm and provides those at risk with a discreet way to let family, friends, and colleagues know that they need help. It was intentionally designed as a continuous hand movement that could be made easily visible on a video call, due to the dramatic increase in usage of personal and professional video calls during this time. Instructional social posts were designed with a two-step visualization of how to perform the signal. The assets were intentionally created without any branding and made available via an online toolkit in English, French, and Spanish, so that they could be easily downloaded for free by all organizations and individuals to use and adapt.

Results

On April 14th, a single 'Signal for Help' post from the Canadian Women’s Foundation instantly went viral across their Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter channels. Notable figures from all walks of society and culture shared the 'Signal for Help' including author Margaret Atwood, actress Amybeth McNulty, Canadian hockey star Cassie Campbell, and Federal Minister Maryam Monsef. This sparked more awareness and sharing in the days, weeks, and months following.

To help further spread awareness of the ‘Signal for Help’, the Canadian Women’s Foundation launched a PSA on May 13th that was shown across Canadian TV networks - including CBC and CTV - and online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUJV-9wvdB8). It has been viewed nearly 300k times on YouTube as of July 20th.

Since the original launch, the initiative has garnered over 500m impressions (and counting) across earned, social, and owned media with notable outlets from around the world such as The Sun UK, Antena3, News.com.au, The Mirror UK, Toronto Star, Vogue, NowThis News, Yahoo News, and many more covering the 'Signal for Help'. The buzz surrounding the ‘Signal for Help’ initiative even led to it being mentioned on the acclaimed Howard Stern Show.

In addition to being recognized by local and national organizations, the Federal government, and various police forces as a tool to help mitigate domestic violence, the signal was also noted as a “best practice” initiative by the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Following the PSA’s release, the signal was shared by celebrities such as Billie Eilish and Hailey Bieber, and through virality made its way from TV to TikTok – a single TikTok post from a user (forsure7) has been liked nearly 1m times and dueted over 6,500 times.

‘Signal for Help’ has also inspired illustrators and artists across the world – including Refinery29 artist, Yazmin Butcher – to create their own unique interpretations of the signal and PSA in order to help spread awareness within their communities. These unique designs can be seen across social media platforms tagged with #SignalforHelp. The original design of the ‘Signal for Help’ is set to be featured in a V&A Dundee artistic exhibition next month showcasing COVID-19 related design innovations.

Overall, the initiative has now been shared by over 100 organizations – such as the Women’s Funding Network in the US – and implemented in over 25 countries around the world, across 6 continents.