We Need Your Vote Once More to Win $10,000

(Cross-Posted from Change Happens )

First things first: PLEASE CLICK HERE AND VOTE FOR SAFER TO WIN $10,000!

You might remember that we entered a contest at the beginning of the month and, thanks to our awesome supporters, made in into the finals. Well as of today the final showdown has begun! All vote counters are turned back to zero, so if you voted the first time please vote again, and if you didn’t get a chance before, we need your help now more than ever! It takes only a couple of minutes to register and open the confirmation email (you can use your old login info if you already registered) but those couple minutes can help us win $10,000 we so desperately need. If you have a few more minutes to spare, and can email your various friends and networks asking them to vote as well , we would be forever thankful.

But why is this worth anyone’s time? What will the money be used for? Let me tell you! SAFER has a new project in the works, involving a partnership with VDay , that will vastly expand the number of college students engaged in sexual assault policy reform and challenging rape culture on campuses nationwide. Tentatively titeled, “The Campus Accountability Project: Demanding Sexual Assault Policy Reform,” the project will connect SAFER with VDay’s huge network of student organizers who each year put on benefit performances on hundreds of college campuses to help eradicate sexual violence.

If you’re familiar with SAFER’s work, you know about our College Sexual Assault Policies Database, where we house analyses of sexual assault policies from a variety of colleges across the country. This summer we’ve designed a student self-submit form for our database that guides students through the process of policy analysis on their own, engaging them in an investigation of how their school works to prevent sexual violence on campus, follows-up with reports of assault, and supports survivors. The analysis process opens students’ eyes to the institutional weaknesses that allow rape culture to persist on campuses (and the strengths that work to resist it!), and we firmly believe in the power of this process to catalyze taking action and making chance.

With VDay’s help and networks, we will distribute the self-submission forms and instructions to thousands of students on hundreds of campuses, sparking discussions and policy reform campaigns across the country. Furthermore, once the submissions are in and verified, our database will contain upwards of 700 policies, and will be exponentially stronger as a tool for student activists and researchers. ALSO, the increase in student knowledge of SAFER will coincide with the launch of our Online Info Shop, a free library of all of our organizing resources for students, including a searchable version of our organizing manual and a bunch of new material.

Obviously a project of this scope requires funding, from the web design work needed to make our database easier to use and search to the staff required to work with students and review all of the policy analysis submissions. As I’ve said before, SAFER is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, so all the money we raise goes directly to making projects like this happen. We’re really excited about the coming months and the potential this project has, and we hope you are too. Please vote . Please get your friends to vote. You are an indispensible part of our work. Thank you so much.