West Virginia Child Advocacy Network SHINE Campaign
No one knows how to talk about child sexual abuse. And that’s a big problem for the West Virginia Child Advocacy Network—the statewide leader in the fight against child abuse.
When no one has the words to speak about a serious problem, stigma and shame soon follow, compounding trauma. WVCAN challenged 84 to develop a campaign that could start to change that reality.
The result was a campaign concept that went viral and became a nationwide movement called SHINE.
SHINE is a national campaign to transform the conversation about child sexual abuse. For too many, childhood is where the trauma starts. But survivors need to know they are not alone—their light connects to others’ in a growing universe of support. All of us have the capacity to be a light survivors can turn to.
By connecting survivors and advocates through the metaphor of light and developing engagement tools that allow West Virginia-based advocates as well as advocates across the country to share their support for survivors, SHINE has transformed the conversation around child sexual abuse and begun the process of eradicating the stigma and shame that so many survivors face.
“When they dreamed up the SHINE Campaign, 84 Agency didn’t look at it as a way to solve a problem for a nonprofit—they looked at it as a way to fix a problem with the world. They looked not only to their own passion to build a more just, kinder world, but also to the key moments in history where our forebears actually made it happen, and then bottled that lightning.
Not everyone is ready for our message just yet, but for those who are, I’ve never seen people so thoroughly consumed with zeal to effect the change promised by a simple idea.”
— Blake Warenik, Director of Communications, National Children’s Alliance
Social Posts
SHINE campaign stories are disseminated through social media and email. Some of the best-performing social posts—like this one about Lieutenant Tony Craigo—have reached nearly 50,000 people.
We created a toolkit with guides and resources, as well as marketing materials, for other organizations to execute their own SHINE campaign.