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Welcome to #NoExcuseForAbuse
This website was created by 7th-form students at BG/BRG Ramsauerstraße in Linz as part of a project work in English.
When working on the topic of crime and violence, we devoted extra time to talk about how particularly girls are affected by violence in their everyday lives.
More specifically we were interested in finding out about girls' experiences with sexual harassment and decided to start our own campaign, #NoExcuseForAbuse, to raise awareness for this issue and to educate people.
When we reflected on our own experiences with harassment, we found out that almost every girl in our classroom had already either been a witness or a victim of some form of harassment. We then had a look at various campaign videos from other countries to get some ideas for our own project (e.g. #DontBeThatGuy, part of the That-Guy campaign by Police Scotland; #whowillyouhelp, part of the "It's never ok" campaign by the Government of Ontario and #Enough, part of the Enough. campaign by the British Government).
Then it was time to give the students at our own school a voice.
We designed two questionnaires (girls and boys), which, anonymously, asked the students at our school about their experiences with harassment. We visualised the results (girls/boys) and selected more elaborate accounts of harassment from the open answers (see testimonials).
As boys often don't realise that their behaviour is, in fact, harassment, we tried to come up with a straightforward and clear explanation. Additionally we developed the TAKE CARE model, which provides ideas and a rough guideline on what bystanders and victims of harassment can do.
We hope that the information we have collected on this website opens your eyes to a very real problem, maybe even makes you question your own or your friends' behaviour and, if you are a victim, makes you feel heard.
One thing is for sure: Harassment is never excuseable. #NoExcuseForAbuse.