If You See This On Somebody’s Palm, Call For Help

A new campaign seeks to offer victims of domestic violence a way to ask for help without saying a word.

According to the Huffington Post, one of every four women in the U.S. has been a victim of domestic violence. When an intimate partner becomes violent, asking for help or reporting their significant other becomes difficult for many victims. For this reason, a new grassroots campaign has been launched to offer a way for victims to report domestic violence and get the help they need.

The Black Dot Campaign encourages victims to draw a solid black dot on the palm of their hand to give a discrete signal that they have suffered abuse.

The black dot can let strangers or authorities know that a victim of violence is in need of help, but is unable to say anything.

According to Providr, The Black Dot Campaign was first launched on Facebook, where it amassed millions of followers as the word spread. The page, however, was eventually removed, as the creators feared it would alert abusers of the campaign. Fortunately, word has continued to spread and the creators say it has already helped victims of abuse worldwide.

“The original ethos for this campaign was to enable a victim to put a dot on their hand around someone they trusted to enable a conversation to start, so they could open that door and hopefully start a process of seeking professional help,” the campaign’s Facebook page read prior to its removal. “This is an idea, thinking outside of the box, trying to open up the world’s eyes and ears to what is going o in terms of abuse.”

According to a report from the Network to End Domestic Violence, on a single day in September 2014, roughly 11,000 requests for services for domestic abuse victims were denied due to a lack of funding. The Black Dot Campaign comes at a moment in which victims of abuse need a simple way to ask for help.

Sources: Huffington Post, Providr / Photo Credit: KMBC via Providr