Some stories have the power to change humanity, but many are never heard due to censorship. So we enlisted people who do have freedom of speech to pass along the messages of people who don't. We turned to the widely popular app: Dubsmash––an app that allows users to create videos with lip-synced audio. From there, Freedom Voices was born as a new way to fight censorship. Through a customized soundboard on Dubsmash, we created short digital clips from real speeches made by famous human rights activists such as Malala Yousafzai, Pussy Riot, Ai WeiWei, and Patrick Stewart. All people had to do was to select one of nine audio recordings, dub it, and share it through social media to voice their support for freedom of speech as a basic human right.

Amnesty International and Dubsmash partnered to create the Freedom Voices soundboard and featured it on the app’s “Discovery” homepage. When users opened the app, the Freedom Voices soundboard was front and center. Implementation took only a few weeks and launched on December 10th, International Human Rights Day. The project consisted of nine audio tracks inside a customized soundboard in the application, built in a native and user-friendly way. The interaction was exactly the same as users were accustomed to, now with a purpose-driven message. Users applied familiar mechanics to create and share a dub, rendering the idea easy and engaging from the start. Because Dubsmash and Amnesty International already had a global footprint, Freedom Voices was easily scaled and made available to the entire user base of over 190 countries.

Six days after its launch, Freedom Voices reached 180 countries, in 6 continents and thousands of people around the world. Freedom Voices Soundboard had 680,000 sounds played, with 74,000 dubs recorded and 11,000 shared. That means a total sound consumption of over 34 days, total dub creation of 2.5 days and an estimated reach of 980.000 people based on average views of hashtagged dubs on social media. Freedom Voices was featured on several news sites and became a hot topic of conversation among celebrities and influencers. But most importantly, Freedom Voices engaged a new generation in the fight for freedom of speech and human rights.