“A young woman sought counselling with the organization I work for after facing online harassment by a former boyfriend. She became very depressed and more than a year since then, she has not recovered fully from that unnerving experience. We reported that incident to the Cyber Crimes unit. But if I had already done this training at the time she came for our assistance, I could have done more to help her.

If I talk in percentages, my knowledge about hate speech on social media and countering hate speech online increased from 30% to 80% after my participation in Search’s training. At the start of the training program, I didn’t even have a Facebook account. I wasn’t that good with my smartphone either.

Before, I was afraid to even assist others in the type of situation I mentioned above. If I am told about a hate speech related incident faced by someone I know, I would first find out the background of the instigator, if that person is influential politically or socially, I wouldn’t even dare to assist the victim fearing implications for myself.

Although I haven’t had any encounters with hate speech on social media, a friend faced an incident in which her picture was used to damage her reputation. Since it was after the training, I knew exactly how to assist my friend by reporting to the Facebook administrator and getting that post removed. It only took us two hours to get the post removed.

Most of us, young and old alike, have access to smartphones and even children now use apps like Zoom for online classes. Even adults don’t think much about sharing various social media posts, memes, posters, photos, so how can we expect young children to apply caution? A lot of us don’t have all the crucial information that can serve as a firewall against hate speech or other harassment. I think Search’s training was both necessary and timely.

I work with a local NGO that assists women migrant workers and displaced women and our organization also implements youth focused activities in Batticaloa. I have been able to make a group of 30 of those women aware about what action to take if they become victims of hate speech and harassment online. I share all hate speech relevant information with these women in our WhatsApp group. Because of Covid-19 related ongoing travel restrictions, we cannot conduct any in-person awareness raising activities at the moment. So until the situation allows us to gather in person, I will use digital mediums to organize awareness raising sessions.

Altogether, we work with 300 women migrant workers and displaced families and my target is to provide hate speech online awareness training to at least 100 women to cover their own families. I also give tuition for Ordinary Levels students. I shared appropriate information about online safety with them too. Apart from these two groups, I also had chats with my younger sister and her friends to make them aware about the importance of online safety for young women.

We picked up key reporting tools and techniques in digital storytelling and citizen journalism sessions of the training program. Muslims in my area try to hide issues that they think would bring shame to their families. I tried to find information about a child abuse case and neither the Zonal Education Office nor the family of the child were forthcoming with accurate details. In the future, I can show them how we are able to protect their identities using the latest technologies and still be able to share their story to bring attention to their predicament.

As our end of training media product, my team, Malala, did a film on how women migrant workers are affected by online hate speech. We also made a poster about it. We wanted to bring attention to the vital economic contributions made by the female migrant workers to this country and communicate why they should not be subjected to hate speech or harassment by their communities. Both these creations have been shared with other participants in We-gital SHEROES, the private Facebook group that SFCG created. We will also share them on both online and offline forums in the near future.

The biggest change I have seen in myself after this training is not having any fear of assisting someone to counter hate speech. I am ready to use my enhanced knowledge and skills to combat the menacing issue of online hate speech.”