BY: Qianwen Zhang
One day, when I was wandering on Twitter, one of the tweets caught my eyes. It introduced a Canadian movie called Aurore and said it was definitely worth watching and inspiring. Out of curiosity, I watched the 2005 biographic drama movie about the 10-year-old girl, Aurore Gagnon, who was abused to death by her stepmother. I almost cried for half of the movie and felt extremely sorry about the poor little girl. The indifferent people and hypocritical pastor deeply hurt my feelings. When Aurore was found dying in the dark and shabby attic, I even wanted to climb into the movie and beat the crap out of her stepmother. In the later time, no matter how harsh the punishment was sent to her stepmother, it would never bring back this little girl’s life and let her have happiness in childhood again. I was sad for that whole day and thinking about whether we really can afford to walk away saying the child abuse is none of our business?
My answer is no. At least I cannot afford such pain, even if it’s neither me nor my children being abused. Probably because of the maternal instinct, though I am not a mother yet, I can’t stand any kind of abuse towards kids. If everyone is indifferent and cold about kids out there being abused, saying “well, that’s not my kids, it’s their family’s issue…none of my business…” as the excuse, who would save your kids from abuse if you were unfortunately gone? NO ONE.
Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children, according to the Childhelp organization whose aims are prevention and treatment of child abuse. They also state that about 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse; children who experience child abuse & neglect are about 9 times more likely to become involved in criminal activity; what’s more, the abused children are more likely to experience teenage pregnancy, psychological disorder, drug abuse. Tons of social issues are raised by the child abuse, and the sympathy and weep for the abused children only cannot solve the problem at all. We have to do something more concrete and helpful to protect those abused kids.
One way is to apply innovation into stopping child abuse. A Spanish foundation, Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk (ANAR), has joined forces with an advertisement agency, the Grey Group Spain, to produce an innovative campaign aimed at the prevention of child abuse. The savvy ad, which is up on the streets of Spain displays two messages, one that is only visible to children and the other to adults.Using a special kind of printing called lenticular printing – which is also used for 3D displays – the images of the ad are based on the angle that they are viewed from.
To adults, the ad will appear with an image of a normal, though seemingly sad young boy with a simple but powerful message, “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.” To children however, or those who are below 4 feet 5 inches in height, they will be able to see an image of a child who has been beaten and bruised. The message is a lot more direct and provides heartfelt instructions, “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you,” along with the foundation’s phone number.
This innovation is awesome! But how do the kids know that what they see is different from what the adults see? What if they think their abusers can also see the help hotlines and therefore be too scared to call for help? What if the abused kids don’t have available access to phones and make safe calls for help? What if the adult abusers find out the secret messages hidden below, and they just take the kids to bypass the ads? Although there are still a bunch of questions about the technology applied in this kind of advertisement, it still worth trying and spreading it to all kinds of advertisements on the street. The more messages were sent out to them, the more likely they would reach us for help. Technology and innovation really can change people’s life and make it a better world for all of us to live in.
Although I was never being abused in my childhood and had a happy innocent time back then, I still can clearly remember the fear of darkness and loneliness when my mom was in another city pursuing her master degree and my dad took care of me alone. Even if this kind of memory lasts long, I have no doubt that the child abuse will be remembered more vividly by the unfortunate children and have more severe future consequences both for themselves and for the society.
Applying modern technology and innovation to address longstanding social problems might make a difference, as long as we, as part of the society, care more about each other and stretch our hands out for those who really need help.
Resources:
1. child abuse national statistics, http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics
2. Child Abuse Ad Uses Lenticular Tech to Deliver Hidden Messages, http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2266535/innovative-child-abuse-ad-delivers-hidden-message
Design and Policy 