What an exciting year it has been!

Here is a glimpse at what 2010 brought us:

• We hit the 300,000 view mark.  Since starting Holla Back DC! we’ve had more than 600 submissions.
• We declared March Public Transit Awareness Month
• We celebrated our one year anniversary in April at Cafe Collage with comedy, spoken word, music, and a raffle.
• Over the summer we received a grant from AAUW to conduct research about street harassment in the DC metro area.  All the information will be put into a state of street harassment report and will help us better meet the communities needs. If you have not taken our survey yet, please do!
• We worked hard to raise money to launch Right Rides in DC.  To date we’ve raised just over $7K.  We still need to raise more to make Right Rides DC a reality in 2011. So if you would like to make a donation you can do so online here. If you make a donation of $50 or more you will automatically become a member of our Founders Circle.
• In April we established a board of 7 amazing local activists, who are working hard to help us take Holla Back DC! to the next level.
• In between all of the anti-public sexual harassment workshops in DC, we traveled from New Orleans to present at the Women of Color Conference in May, to Swarthmore to present at the National Women’s Martial Arts Conference in July, to Cali to the National Sexual Assault Conference in September, to NYC to talk at Barnard in October, then back to DC to present at AU’s Public Anthropology Conference.
• We also appeared in other blogs and talk shows, including the Kojo Nmadi show!

We’ve also been working behind the scenes on a lot of exciting changes that we will let you know about in 2011!

None of this work would be possible without the fiscal and emotional support of the DC Metro community. Through your connections , we’ve met amazing individuals, potential mentors, board members, and excited donors. We are in the process of incorporating and becoming a 501(c)(3), launching Right Rides, and developing a new website in order to increase our efforts and meet the needs  in order to make make our city free from public sexual harassment and assault.

If you would like to get involved please fill out our volunteer form here. (If you have already filled the form out but haven’t heard from us yet, it’s because we are working on developing a volunteer training and we will be in contact with everyone soon.)

We will be on hiatus till early January for a much need break and some relaxation time.  That doesn’t mean that street harassment stops or that you can’t submit your experience(s) which we will post when we return.

Thank you to everyone who has shared their personal experiences to help raise awareness about public sexual harassment.

We look forward to what the New Year has to offer.  Here is to many more safe walks, rides on the Metro and bus, and engaging conversations to end public sexual harassment and assault in the DC metro area.