The YWCA of Metro Vancouver is using OOH to highlight the prevalence of gender-based violence in its community.

The contextual campaign, called “Close to Home,” uses bus shelter ads to visually represent the number of sexual assault cases that were reported within a 10-block radius of each ad. The campaign is part of the annual “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence,” which begins today, and was launched to urge the B.C. provincial government to declare gender-based violence an epidemic.

“The harsh reality of gender-based violence is that it’s among our communities and closer to home than we may want to believe,” says YWCA Metro Vancouver’s CEO, Erin Seeley. “That’s why we created a data-driven OOH campaign that shows the prevalence of sexual assaults in proximity to the ads themselves right in the neighbourhoods where people live, work and play.”

According to the YWCA, B.C. has the second highest rate of gender-based violence of any province in Canada. While the YWCA’s bus shelter ads will highlight the reported cases of sexual assaults in five Vancouver neighbourhoods, the digital component of the campaign will highlight the reported cases in communities across the province.

“As a non-profit, we have very limited budgets for campaigns and want to maximize our impact,” Seeley notes. ” The idea is that gender-based violence isn’t confined to any one area – it happens everywhere, across all communities, regardless of socioeconomic or demographic factors – it happens close to home.”  

The “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence” is an annual global campaign that begins on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and goes until December 10, Human Rights Day.

According to the Government of Canada, “The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women was designated in 1999 by the United Nations General Assembly. The date of November 25 was chosen to commemorate the lives of the Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic who were violently assassinated in 1960. The day pays tribute to them and urges global recognition of gender-based violence.”