In Her Shoes – AIRWA Project
The Australian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Alliance (AIRWA) gives a voice to the stories of immigrant and refugee women across the nation with the In Her Shoes campaign, telling those stories through the universal metaphor of the shoe. Launched on International Women’s Day 2012, the In Her Shoes campaign is an advertising, social media and PR campaign facilitated by ICE for AIRWA.
Utilising Facebook for the first time to encourage women – from newly arrived women to those settled here for generations – the campaign encouraged women to get involved with this online movement, to tell their stories of life in Australia using the universal medium of shoes.
It was a journey that involved consultations, a campaign across video, social media, print and publicity, capacity building in media, and amazing participants and project staff.
Who’s who of the project? Check out the videos for the participants’ and their stories. Who else? Fadia Abboud (Director), Vanna Seang (DoP), Zahra Al-Samawi (Editor), Dev Singh (Social Media), Anastasia Kaldi (AIRWA Program Manager), Sela Taufa (AIRWA Treasurer), Vivi Germanos-Koutsounadis (AIRWA Chair). ICE staff included Indu Balachandran (Project Manager), Ben Rose (Coordinator), Jackie Leewai (Communications), Kristy Mayhew (Marketing).
“The In Her Shoes project we did with ICE is the best thing we’ve done for improving the perceptions and images of migrant and refugee women in Australia. It has been a mind blowing experience for AIRWA members, engaging with media in articulating the migrant women’s experiences in a way that their stories inspires other Australians rather than continues to victimised them…..to counter-act the poorly portrayed and misformed stories run by mainstream media on asylum seekers and boat people etc. Through In Her Shoes campaign with ICE we are generating a dialogue that unifies our members and the wider general public, away from stereotypes of race, age, religious and language backgrounds to common gender equality issues. The colour, accents, languages and depth of the campaign has redefined the perception of the immigrant and refugee experience in Australia, and has created a dialogue that is just as important for our daughters as it is for us.” Sela Taufa, Australian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Alliance (AIRWA)
