genEquality

About Pirth.org, from Sherry and Jakob:

Pirth.org is a personalized resource and reporting platform designed to support people facing all forms of online violence, including: cyberbullying, doxxing, exploitation, gender-based violence, hate speech, non-consensual intimate imagery, physical threats, violent threats, and more. Through our digital platform, we can rapidly provide critical resources and support for people facing online violence everywhere around the world as well as aggregate important data points that can be used to drive legislation, policy, and social change. But this is a human problem, and it needs a human-centered approach.

To kickstart our mission, we are raising $75,000 to cover essential needs, including:

We need to build out our team of developers, security architects, case managers, legal advisors, communications professionals and more. Doing so will ensure we’re operating at the highest levels of excellence when it comes to providing support and resources to keep people safe and empowered to do what they do – whether that is serving their constituents, fighting for human rights in the face of dictatorship, investigating and reporting on global + local issues, or simply living their lives as children/teenagers, women, members of the LGBTQIA community, and other at-risk individuals.

Pirth.org is fiscally sponsored by genEquality. genEquality directs 100% of your donation to pirth.org, and all donations are 100% tax deductible.

Our hope for pirth.org is that we can support people facing any sort of online threat or harm and help keep them safe, shine a light on what’s happening across all of social media…and ultimately, push for global and local solutions, security, and safety.

Please consider donating to the campaign and sharing it with your friends, family, colleagues, and network. Together, we can make a difference and stand against online violence. Thank you for your support!

With gratitude,

Sherry Hakimi & Jakob Lokke Madsen

Cofounders of pirth.org

The Origin Story

Nearly 2 years ago, a photo of Sherry in a meeting with US Secretary of State Tony Blinken set off a chain of vile harassment and violent threats towards her on social media. In dealing with all of it, she learned a lot about how threats on social media are handled (or, not handled)…as well as the support and resources that are available (if you know where to look).

In the immediate wake of it all, Sherry withdrew; she stopped engaging publicly and held back from using her voice. Five months later, she decided she couldn’t let this experience silence her, nor could she let the status quo stand.

And that is how pirth.org was born.

Saying "online violence is a serious problem" feels like an understatement. While activists, elected officials, journalists, LGBTQIA+ individuals, public figures, students (especially children aged 10-18 years), and women disproportionately bear the brunt of these types of threats and harm, the unfortunate reality is that online violence can impact anyone, anywhere. It’s a problem that’s growing with speed and scale, globally. We need technical guardrails, we need to rebuild social norms, and we need to get back to a place where we treat each other — and even disagree — with civility. It is never ok to threaten, especially to physically threaten to harm, someone. Online threats and harassment are never “just words;” they create an unseen wound directly upon impact. We need to take action before the situation gets completely out of hand.

Based on her experience, Sherry knew that there needed to be a centralized, survivor-centric, independently-run resource -- a place that anyone could turn to for support, for accountability, for solutions.

Nearly 18 months after the idea was formed – on the sidelines of the 2024 United Nations General Assembly – Sherry and Jakob publicly demo'd this first-of-its-kind global resource and reporting platform -- the platform that Sherry and other survivors say that they wish had existed when they first started getting online threats/attacks.

Help us fund the creation of murals and art actuations worldwide. We have multiple projects in progress, and more to come. The more we can raise, the more we can do!

These Murals for Freedom - all inspired by the values of "Zan, Zendegi, Azadi" - are an opportunity for the Iranian diaspora community to unite in support and raise awareness of what is happening in Iran. Art is a powerful universal language, able to amplify the voices of the silenced.

Every mural and art activation will be led by a local artist, with input and contribution from the local community, standing in solidarity with the feminist, female-led movement in Iran.

Your support will make it possible for these murals, which come from the heads, hearts, and hands of fellow Iranians, to come to life. Thanks in advance for your contribution to this cause. It means so much to Iranians everywhere, but especially to Iranians in Iran.

Please visit www.MuralsForFreedom.org for more information on past and future projects.