In our free society, people often act like they are living in a happy bubble. Ignoring what is going on in the world, ignoring what they can do and must do. Our client, the IGFM, believes that it is our duty as humans to see the world around us. We must not look away from people in need of help. For this is what makes us human.

I AM HUMAN is a tool to raise awareness for human rights violations. By simply making a small change to a Captcha, we catch internet users off guard. Usually a captcha asks to prove that you are not a robot by selecting pictures of random objects. We ask the users to identify people in need of help – and truly confirm their humanity. Afterwards the users learn more about the stories behind the pictures and ways to join our fight for human rights.

We spend a lot of time online. Browsing, liking, sharing. However, we mainly procrastinate and stay in our online environment. And that’s ok. The Problem is that even a few minutes of our awareness could really make a difference for people in need of help. Therefore, the strategy was to surprise users in their regular online behavior.

We put our captcha between the user and the content they wanted to see. The pictures forced the users to involve themselves and the stories behind the pictures, engaging them emotionally. With our free plug-in we made it easy for everybody to become active and support the project. This way, no media spend was necessary and the IGFM, as an organization mostly operated with volunteers, were able to attract publicity like never before – in breadth and diversity.

A captcha is a common online tool. Thus, we only needed to make small changes (exchanging the pictures) to achieve the desired effect. With the free plug-in we gave everybody a tool to support the project without much effort or coding knowledge.

Having Meade Soltani, daughter of the imprisoned human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, as a testimonial in our activation film and in our press conference helped to engage the public – including several politicians. By putting the plug-in on their websites, they supported the movement with a public statement and became forerunners for many others.

I AM HUMAN is no sprint. This is a campaign and a tool made for the long run. However, the first results show that the project is on track: the average user spent more than 2 minutes with the captcha. This interaction, our activation film and the engagement of several politicians lead 350% more support for the IGFM projects. The most important outcome is that the IGFM was able to win more politicians as political sponsors: 300% more than before the campaign. These political sponsorships are the most effective weapon for freeing imprisoned human rights activists – and therefore in fighting human rights violations in general.