Te invito

Te invito campaign

Background

The campaign was informed by listening sessions conducted with Latin@ men and women from the St. Paul/Minneapolis metropolitan area. Among other topics, participants discussed gender roles, socialization, education, violence and culture. We asked participants why it is important for Latino men to be involved in ending domestic violence and how men would like to be more engaged in the work. Overwhelmingly, we heard, especially from the men…”Invite us.” We also heard, from both men and women; that men listen to other men. These PSA campaign materials were inspired by the wisdom and experiences of the men and women who generously shared their time and ideas with us. We would like to thank the listening session participants for helping us make this campaign so unique and so meaningful.

Methodology

Based on our learning from the listening sessions, we decided to develop a campaign that engaged local Latino leaders in speaking directly to other Latino men. Through our networks, we recruited a total of 15 Latino leaders and asked them two questions:

Why is it important for Latino men to be involved in ending domestic violence?
If you were to invite someone to join you in this work, what would you say?

The videos that are included in this toolkit reveal their unscripted, authentic answers.

We hosted three recording sessions and recruited men that represent a wide spectrum of Latin@ communities in order to create tools that as many Latino men as possible could relate to. We did not tell them what to say. We asked for their thoughts and worked together with them to distill their key messages into the short phrases that appear in the videos and print materials. This is a radical approach to developing campaign materials because it effectively meant that we did not control the message. In fact, you may notice that in one video, a young man says, “Te invito a mandar la palabra afuera,” which is a Spanglish translation of “I invite you to get the word out.” We decided to keep the message because it speaks to this young man’s reality and his authentic message. In doing so, we honor his reality and his contribution to the project.

Use

These materials were developed so that locally based organizations may use them to invite Latino men to participate in their prevention efforts. The posters, tear-sheets, business cards and print ad all have editable fields to allow for some customization. We have designed them to be easily printed on a standard color printer, or sent to a web-based business card printing company for easy, inexpensive printing. If you are interested in customizing and using the video PSAs for your own work, please contact products@esperanzaunited.org for assistance. This media kit contains information and materials to support your work to engage local media in spreading the word about your work.