This Dating App Just Launched A Powerful Campaign To Combat Violence Against Women

In honor of International Women's Day tomorrow, dating app Happn has partnered with human rights organization Equality Now to raise awareness for female survivors of physical and sexual abuse. But this isn't your average awareness campaign — the app is making sure its users are exposed to the reality of abuse by putting survivors directly into their dating pool feeds. In response to the chilling statistic that one in three women worldwide has been abused at one point, Happn and Equality Now are launching the One In Three campaign to remind Happn users in over 20 cities around the world just how disturbingly prevalent these crimes are. Since the premise of Happn is to connect users with people they've already crossed paths with, the campaign will populate timelines with images of models with bruises and the profile name "I'm One In Three," forcing its users to contemplate how they've likely known a woman who was a survivor of abuse. According to a statement from Happn's cofounder and CEO Didier Rappaport, it was simply a matter of "making the connection between overlooked survivors of violence against woman [sic] and all the rest of us who otherwise pass them by every day." Something that affects so many women on a global scale, he argued, shouldn't be so easily ignored. Yasmeen Hassan, the Global Executive Director of Equality Now, said in a statement that this campaign should go beyond spreading awareness and that users should treat it as a call to action. International Women's Day, she said, is a time when government officials should naturally reconsider any laws that "perpetuate violence, or which discriminate against women." "We hope that showing how enormous this problem is will inspire everyone to call on their governments to end all forms of violence against women," she said.