"Our project aimed to address the issue that gendered violence is so often accepted as ‘just the way things are’ and challenge harmful ideas and stereotypes that are at the root of this problem.

We agreed that creating this change can start by just talking about these issues. Simply opening up a conversation is a powerful way to connect people over polarising topics and shine light on the things that people rarely talk about.”

“So, to help create change and start these conversations we created a pack of 16 conversation cards for our project. Our plan was for the cards to be a tool to open up difficult conversations to everyone and make them engaging. We published one card per day during the 16 Days of Activism to use the wider campaign to help spread the resource, and our message.

Overall, the project went really well!

It was a really fun and inspiring process to create the cards and then plan how to send them out to our community. Nearly 200 individuals received the cards as they were published each day, with many more viewing on social media, our website, or purchasing the full pack of cards directly.”

WHAT WAS OUR IMPACT?

“To gain feedback on the 16 cards, we sent a ‘Rate Our Resource’ form to everyone who received them to find out their experience using them to start conversations. 83% of respondents either found the cards ‘amazing’ or ‘great’ which is really positive.

One thing that we reflected on from the feedback was that next time we would make a ‘classroom-friendly’ version that could be used with younger years as some of the content was too advanced for them.

We also received positive emails from our partners and friends saying they’d enjoyed using the cards and had really powerful conversations as a result!”

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Don’t be discouraged by how daunting a project may feel!

When we first decided we wanted to create this pack of conversation cards, it felt like it would be impossible to get everything done in time. We broke the whole project down into loads of small tasks, and assigned them across the team so everyone was sharing the workload. We had one clear deadline to work to but we made a deadline for each small task so that we got everything done with time to spare.

WHAT WOULD WE DO DIFFERENTLY NEXT TIME?

We all agreed we would make another set that could be used by younger pupils, and we would love to make physical copies too!

We want to think more about accessibility in our next project, for example making a pack of cards with no words, just images so that language is not a barrier to anyone wanting to use them.