By Sarah Soysa, FRIDA Advisor
For a week in October, I became the first-ever curator for #4FRIDA, a new guest curator project inspired by @sweden and @PeopleOfCanada. Looking at the FRIDA principles and objectives with both excitement and nervousness, I started my research to collect videos, blogs, news and articles on such diverse topics as gender, feminism, women, sexual and reproductive health and rights, child rights, young people and socioeconomic and political issues in the world to publish during my #4FRIDA week.
It was indeed a smooth process because FRIDA staff members made me feel very comfortable and updated with the whole procedure, and they also introduced me to a new app called Buffer. Buffer makes your life easier! Through Buffer I could schedule all my tweets and Facebook posts accordingly to get them automatically posted each day at different times! Every morning I would wake up with excitement, schedule my posts for FRIDA’s social media channels, using the #4FRIDA hashtag, and also check the analytics of posts from previous days, which was really a fun learning experience for me.
The posts added a fresh change to FRIDA’s social media and it made FRIDA’s followers curious and eager to experience the #4FRIDA project as well. During my period as #4FRIDA curator, I covered diverse topics that always had my interest and made me passionate to share my views on, such as domestic violence, culture and rethinking rights, rape and victim blaming, sexism, funding and resources for girls, gender, grant and training opportunities, sex worker rights, feminism, activism, abortion rights, sexual exploitation, inclusion of indigenous people in Sustainable Development Goals, Comprehensive Sexuality Education, HIV and stigma, child marriage, body image acceptance, menstruation and many other Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights issues. It was exciting to see the number of comments, shares, likes, favourites and retweets on these posts and to see such interaction taking place. Certain posts got more visibility and interest than others, such as gender and feminism related posts, which made me realize the expectation and interest of most of our fans and followers.
Through the #4FRIDA project, the numbers of FRIDA’s followers increased, and FRIDA also got a lot of attention through my personal social media channels, where I posted about my new role as the guest curator. Many activists, philanthropists, social workers and young advocates were interested to know what FRIDA does and learn about my role as an advisor. FRIDA’s work is generously appreciated by a large number of people and #4FRIDA increased the support for FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund even more. It is definitely a great start and a much needed change on social media channels, adding perceptions, interests and passion of advisors, funders and other stakeholders of FRIDA, and creating a diverse flavoursome experience for both us at FRIDA and FRIDA’s social media followers. Indeed, the project is a great way to show that the feminist movement is not just one homogenous voice, but actually a lively and active conversation of many different voices. #4FRIDA emphasized and proved FRIDA’s core values – flexibility, resources, inclusivity, diversity and action – to the world once again with its innovative and one-of-a-kind initiatives this year.
Stay tuned for the next #4FRIDA!
