How everything started
“Continuing the “We Are Alike” media campaign turned out to be a natural and important step for us. Initially, we planned for the campaign to have two parts, but made a final decision on the importance of continuing the campaign after completing the first part. We noticed that despite the fact that there were no new videos on our TikTok account for almost a year, the number of views continued to grow. This showed us that there is a huge demand for content created by transgender people. Society in our region lacks information and open dialogue on this topic,” says Tina Sobko, ECOM’s Communications Officer.
What is the secret of the success of the second part of the “We are alike” campaign?
“This year we filmed campaign videos in four different countries: Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. We were also able to involve people from Ukraine and Belarus to participate in the filming. Therefore, we significantly expanded the geographical coverage of the second part of the campaign, which gave the public the opportunity to hear the voices of trans people from different countries in the EECA region.
An important difference is that in this cycle of the campaign, educational videos were created by transgender people themselves, and not by medical experts, as in the first part. The fact that it is representatives of the trans community themselves who explain in detail complex terms and processes in our videos helps them connect much better with the viewer, and the information itself is more understandable to the audience,” says Amir Mukambetov, Coordinator of ECOM’s advocacy and the “Trans*Map in EECA” project.
3 most popular clips of the second part of the campaign
“The importance of this campaign for the EECA region is that it helps increase the visibility of trans people while emphasizing kindness and diversity. We set out to showcase the diversity of experiences and lives of different trans people in a setting that everyone can relate to. The notion of support was an important component, and we noticed that the comments left by trans people under our videos noted the importance of seeing representatives of their country and feeling solidarity and support from the community. This campaign created a space where every trans person can feel that they are not alone, and that their story and experiences have value and are important to others”, summed up Suleyma Kelgembaeva, ECOM’s Advocacy Officer.