“To raise funds for CTA advertisements that advocate respect for all while using public transit.”

This is the mission of Courage Campaign: CTA, a campaign founded in October of 2014 by Parker graduate Kara Crutcher, class of 2008.

This past summer, I was an intern along with five other students at the Courage Campaign. While I did get good experience in working for a small company, the most important lessons I learned had nothing to do with my involvement. The Courage Campaign: CTA strongly advocates against arguably one of the most important social issues that exist today: public harassment.

I applied for an internship at the campaign not exactly knowing what to expect. Once I read into it a little further, though, I became very interested in learning more about the campaign, specifically why Crutcher made the decision to create it. I, along with some other high school and college students, met with her to discuss what she specifically needed help with on the campaign. I decided to work in social media, mainly posting photos on the campaign’s Instagram account (@couragecta) that were relevant to the topic of sexual harassment, specifically harassment that occurs in public spaces.

At a glance, posting photos on Instagram looks like a fairly easy job. For most people, the most complicated part is probably picking a single filter from the app’s editing tools. This is not the case with the Courage Campaign, which relies heavily on social advertising in order to reach as many supporters as possible and attract people who haven’t heard of the campaign before. When posting a photo on Instagram, I went through a specific thought process each time, asking myself three questions: What am I posting? Why am I posting it? How is my post going to appeal to a wide range of people?

My answers to these questions significantly affected all aspects of the photo, making a big difference in how Instagram users reacted to the post. I posted a wide range of photos, while simultaneously making sure they had a consistent theme.  I posted photos such as a piece of artwork with the caption “my outfit is not an invitation”, or statistics showing the top public harassment locations and how many people experience sexual harassment on the street, even tweets about how women feel walking around in public.

Further along into my internship, however, my thoughts on the Courage Campaign began to change dramatically, as I realized that the campaign is much more than an Instagram or Facebook page. The more I learned about Crutcher and why she created the campaign, the more the story and message behind it truly showed why the campaign matters so much– not just to CTA commuters, but to public transit customers everywhere.