When enough people start to care, it becomes a movement
and when the movement becomes big enough, it's the beginning of a revolution!
Promoting Civic Consciousness
We strive for a civically aware and responsible society where citizens are active participants in the making of the decisions that affect them.
Advocating for an Inclusive Society
We stand for a society that is open and inclusive to all irrespective of divisions such as age, class, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality or disability.
Driving Accountability
We strive to ensure that communities have the skills, information and tools to hold their decision-makers to account.
About Hashtag Generation
Hashtag Generation is a movement led and run by a group of young tech-savvy, socially conscious Sri Lankans advocating for the meaningful civic and political participation of youth, especially young women and young people from minority groups.
The group adopts a non-partisan approach and works with the strong conviction that decision-making at all levels should remain transparent and inclusive and in order to remain sustainable and build lasting peace in Sri Lanka. We mobilize social and new media tools to raise awareness and catalyze dialogue on important social issues. Our work has ranged from advocating for youth participation in decision-making, strengthening women’s civic and political engagement, advocacy for the rights of ethnic, religious and sexual minorities and raising awareness on the importance of cyber security and countering misinformation and online hate speech.
Our Success Stories
WeGovernSL
Empowering current and aspiring women politicians using information communication technology tools
Even though Sri Lanka was the first country in the world to elect a woman head of state, the representation of women in politics and governance at all levels of the country has been alarmingly low for the past six decades or more. Despite the fact that women in Sri Lanka have exercised over 70 years of universal franchise, as of today, women are marginalized from key institutions of decision-making. At present, 53% of Sri Lanka’s population is female, yet only 5.3% of the parliament consists of women.
Negative stereotypes and deeply rooted patriarchal values remain at the root for the low representation of women. However, there is also a gap in skills which are provided to women and girls as often boys are told they are leaders and girls have to take the second row.
The project ‘We Govern SL’ was conceptualized to address this problem at its most fundamental level. We engage in knowledge sharing and capacity building in order to empower women from across the political divide, to enter into the arena of politics. The project provided direct training for over 300 women and girls from across the country.
Furthermore, Hashtag Generation engaged a much wider group of over 100,000 persons via social media in order to be advocates for a more inclusive and representative system of government.
HerSafeSpace
Empowering communities to address Violence against Women and Girls
This 18-month project was implemented in the Moneragala, Hambantota, Jaffna and Batticaloa districts by a coalition of organizations which included the Foundation for Innovative Social Development, the British council, the Jaffna Social Action Centre, Janathakshan and Hashtag Generation. The project aimed to increase knowledge and change practices, attitudes and behaviour of individuals and communities to catalyze the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). We engaged women and youth leaders representing these communities using community-based knowledge to identify and design interventions to address SGBV in their own localities.
The project had three implementing phases – namely, the community mobilization and capacity building, engagement and strengthening linkages with service providers and sharing impact, learnings and the recommendations. The most important aspect of the project was the design and the implementation of social action projects by women and youth leaders themselves who underwent the 5 training.
PARTNERS
