Elephant in the Room para PC

The Red Elephant Foundation is an initiative that is built on the foundations of story-telling, civilian peacebuilding and activism for sensitisation on all drivers of peace - gender, race, nationality, colour and orientation. The initiative is titled "Red Elephant" to stand out as a vehicle that projects stories that must never be forgotten: stories that show you such courage that you should never forget, and stories that show the world such profound lessons that the world should never forget. In doing so, the initiative aims at creating awareness and opening up channels of communication towards creating societies of tolerance, peacebuilding and equality.

The Red Elephant Foundation's activities are chunked down into five key blocks:

1) Storytelling: In the long term, we hope to shift mindsets and pivot people naturally towards equality, peace and non-violence. This change can come only by making lasting impact through information. We curate stories of survivors, change-makers and peace-workers around the world so that these stories inspire action, empathy and awareness of the world around us. It is about putting a name and a face to the world's many statistics. The stories we tell are curated on our home page.

2) Education & Sensitization: While our stories remain online and paint portraits of reality, we make them actionable by building curriculums to address issues of gender inequality, violence in communication and action, and to address the need for sensitization around gender based violence. These curriculums are tailor-made to suit each demographic's needs, and are then used to conduct training sessions at schools, colleges, community groups and work places. Our education programs are curated on our ChalkPeace Microsite.

3) Tech For Good: While our goals of storytelling and education/sensitization are couched in the long-term, we also understand the imminent need for assistance, sensitized help and qualitative support for survivors of violence. This encouraged the birth of an online tech-based tool that maps organizations providing legal, medical, resource, education/employment help and police, ambulance and consular services across 196 countries in the world. Our GBV Help Map can be found on this platform.

4) Digital Advocacy: The themes of peace and gender equality are not issues in isolation, but have myriad inter-relationships through intersections with race, religion, language, colour, social situations and much more. No dialogue around gender equality or peace is complete without accounting for these factors. We curate campaigns for awareness on various themes using digital media. These campaigns serve a two-pronged strategy: online stakeholding and awareness, and offline dialogue building and exchange. Some campaigns include: More than my Body and Break a Gender Stereotype. We also participate in the 16 Days of Activism against VAW and He For She.

5) Research: Driven by the need to inform our activism, we have an active research and development wing that addresses specific and pressing questions under gender equality and peace that tie in with the law across the world, policies across the world, and psycho-social impacts and needs. We have dedicated teams that examine themes and publish white papers, backgrounders and information every quarter.