About

Mission

Project SOMEONE works to build awareness, create spaces for pluralistic dialogues, and combat discrimination and online hate. Our multimedia materials, art installations, training curricula and programs aim to prevent hate speech and build resilience towards radicalization that leads to violent extremism.

Inspiration

Project SOMEONE embodies pluralism through the co-creation and sustainable promotion of dialogic spaces to build community resilience and tolerance. We magnify the narratives of some of the most marginalized sections of society including Black, Indigenous and LGBTQ2I+ communities, religious minorities, refugees and diverse persons of colour. Our teams are multidisciplinary and culturally adapted with expertise in public policy, psychiatry, therapy, media literacy, theology and education. Our tools are framed in principles of social pedagogy that encourage the inclusive adoption of mobile, social, and digital media by diverse members of the public.

Project SOMEONE suppresses hierarchies of knowledge and power in creating community-oriented solutions to divisive issues including misogyny, systemic discrimination, profiling, and racism. Through the careful curation of social media analytics and dialogic platforms, the team helps stakeholders reflect carefully on their own positions of privilege, build empathy, and consider the marginalised others’ perspectives. It ensures the sustainability of these community-led initiatives by re-orienting social justice programs to build leadership within disenfranchised members of Canadian society, and by proposing and evaluating solutions to long-standing problems associated with social polarisation. In sum, its innovation is grounded in rigorous methodological approaches to public engagement, and thereby is culturally adapted to target diverse youth, school and community members, as well as public policy, criminal justice, and public safety personnel.

Leadership

Project SOMEONE ensures access to resources related to the promotion of multiple ways of knowing and doing which are curated within curricular and media databases. We create unique learning opportunities for understanding humanist principles and equality, promote intercultural dialogue, encourage creativity and artistic differences, and foster quality education with the direct involvement of culturally and socially diverse groups.

Project SOMEONE is a leader in the inclusion of all participants and audiences irrespective of age, sex, dis/ability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic status through better accessibility to cultural resources, direct involvement, and participation of the public – particularly in Indigenous communities – in co-creation processes. It is fundamental to the Project’s mission to provide technological resources (e.g. open online courses and linguistic analysis databases) that allow audiences to see and hear marginalized voices, and to understand how public conversations shape perceptions. It promotes peaceful and inclusive communities both online and offline, providing clear and guided instructions on how to protect fundamental freedoms and best avoid persistent antisocial, prejudicial, racist, and other negative behaviours.

Highlights

In 2018, we worked with over 40 Norwegian teacher educators, artists and youth to create media narratives that describe contextualized stories of racism and discrimination, which were subsequently performed to over 5000 members of the public at the prestigious Festspillene i Bergen music festival.

In 2018-19, our team in Lebanon worked with over 300 members of NGOs, universities, media foundations, and human rights groups to adapt, co-create, and implement a digital literacy program that empowers marginalized populations such as refugee youths to build prosocial and positive relationships with Lebanese youths from host communities.

In 2019, Project SOMEONE’s team co-created documentary-based interventions to promote pluralistic dialogues with Indigenous communities in Lac Simon as well as minority groups in Montréal in Québec, Canada.

In 2020, our From Hate to Hope massive open online course debuted with over 550 participants from 55 countries.

Our most recent initiative, Landscape of Hope, explores the boundaries of inclusivity of marginalized communities by creating exclusive artistic spaces for them to project their unique narratives. Landscape of Hope is a primary prevention project-which has created art-based installations in Canada, Iceland and Norway involving over 600 participants-that empowers youth with critical digital literacy skills to create alternative media narratives that build resilience against discrimination.

Reach

  • Web portal created in May 2016 with 11 distinct multimedia, curricular and public engagement projects focusing on critical thinking, information literacy, and social pedagogy. 9 additional projects added since 2018.
  • Training key stakeholders in schools, public safety, criminal justice, NGOs, social service providers – over 22,900 reached via workshops and public engagement events in Canada, the USA, Belgium, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon.
  • Over 122,000 site visits with 47,150 individual visitors from 153 countries between May 2016 and July 2022.
  • Secured $5.8 million in funding from government, private foundations and international agencies since 2014.

Projects
Participants engaged
Countries where we've worked
Individual web visitors