March 2023 Volunteer Highlight - Social Stride
Pictured above from left to right: Angelica Quesada, Hala Loulou, Adrian Ariza, and Simi Sandhu at the National Social Stride conference - Making Social Strides: A Conversation on Online Hate and Discrimination.
Hala, Adrian and Simi are all volunteers with JHC’s Social Stride Initiative. They attended and supported in person at the National Conference: Making Social Strides, a hybrid event that took place in Edmonton, Alberta on March 24-25, 2023. In their capacity as key volunteers in Social Stride, they have supported the initiative through engaging with research, and collecting data to better understand the effectiveness of reporting mechanisms of social media platforms. Adrian and Simi are part of the research team; they have designed data tools and strategies and created the analytical framework we are using to do data analysis. Hala is an incident reported and has supported the team by reporting incidents of hate and discrimination online to several platforms and identifying trends of hate online.
In this blog post, Hala, Adrian and Simi share a bit of the work they do with Social Stride and the impact this work at JHC has had on them.
What Program with JHC are you involved with?
All: Social Stride
What attracted you to volunteering with JHC?
Hala: When browsing social media, I noticed that some people used phrases that contained racist expressions against a race, immigrant, color, or religion. For this reason, I liked to volunteer and participate in combating this social phenomenon.
Adrian: I heard about it from a friend and I applied to become a volunteer.
Simi: I first discovered the Data Analyst position on a volunteer website. Research is a huge interest of mine, and as a recent graduate of the Master of Public Health program, I wanted to further strengthen my skills in research and data analysis.
How long have you been a volunteer for this initiative (and for JHC as a whole)?
Halal: 5 months
Adrian: Around 4 months
Simi: 8 months
What are your (volunteer) activities and what do they involve?
Hala: My volunteer work requires me to report any discriminatory comments on social media.
Adrian: I am part of the research team for the Social Strides project. I help the team with the theoretical framework of the project and designing the research questions for data gathering.
Simi: I support the data collection processes, reporting, and analysis in monitoring and evaluating services and programs of the Social Stride Project.
What is it like to volunteer for this initiative?
Hala: It is a wonderful experience, especially since you can contribute to correcting a mistake and an offense.
Adrian: It is very interesting and fulfilling to feel a part of something which can help the community.
Simi: I find it extremely rewarding to contribute to the Social Stride Project, especially since the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digital platforms, introducing additional challenges like online hate, discrimination, and misinformation. Being a part of this initiative allows me to contribute to making the online environment a safer and more inclusive space.
What has surprised you most about this role?
Hala: I didn't know that with my reports I could turn a bad situation into a better one.
Adrian: How many other people are interested in helping and finding solutions for the issue of online hate and discrimination.
Simi: One thing that has surprised me about this initiative is its widespread reach, with peers located all across Canada. It's inspiring to see so many individuals coming together from different regions to address the important issues of the initiative.
Are there any learnings/ challenges you have experienced through this work?
Hala: I feel there are a lot of those who write racist comments on social media and this requires more work and firmer action to stop them.
Adrian: It requires a lot of work and collaboration to do a project like this. The more our social life moves towards the online world, the more we need to learn about that environment and how to be respectful towards others.
Simi: Identifying online hate and discrimination for research purposes is difficult because of many challenges including things like how to define hate speech, understanding different social and historical contexts, and the many ways hate speech can be expressed online (e.g., through different languages and images). Also, I’ve learned that there can be legal issues involved in defining hate speech, such as deciding what counts as free speech and what counts as discrimination.
Interested in learning more about current volunteer opportunities at JHC?
Visit: John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights | Volunteer Connector
