Siem Reap: This Life is a Siem Reap-headquartered NGO that strives to protect women in Cambodian communities experiencing domestic violence. As part of the annually held international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign that started on 25 November, This Life launched an awareness campaign titled ‘Virtual Reality’, which includes a short film that shows the reality of domestic violence as experienced by women in Cambodia and calls on everyone to “reach out, check in and act”.

The video utilizes VR goggles to tell the story, drawing attention to the impact that violence has on all members of the community and particularly highlighting the fact that violence is not a game, but an unfortunate reality for many women in Cambodia.

In an interview with EAC News, This Life’s Executive Director, Billy Gorter, explained that the mission of their organization is “to listen to, engage with, and advocate side by side with children, families and communities as they define and act on their own solutions to complex social challenges.”

Elaborating more on the subject of domestic violence, he added that “Domestic violence isn’t a Cambodian problem alone, it’s a global problem, and research shows that one in three women across the world face violence at some point in their lifetime, which is a shocking statistic, something that we’re trying to address.”

Regarding some of the responses the organization has received from their campaign, This Life’s Communities Section Lead, Borany Chea, said that they have received many messages and reactions of people sharing their feelings and experiences, and many even reaching out to the campaign through This Life’s social media pages to get more information about how to protect themselves or the people around them from domestic violence.

She continued that while the Virtual Reality campaign was launched for the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, This Life still continues to provide support to those who reach out through their Facebook page. They have set up a chatbot on their Facebook messenger which automatically responds with information about domestic violence, provide further contact details to the appropriate organizations and authorities, and also acts as a referral service.

“We have a list of NGOs who work in domestic violence [related fields], we have the telephone number from the government, local authorities who are responsible for [responding to] domestic violence [related cases] as well. So this is how we run the campaign and we provide support to those who reach out to us,” she said.

Executive Director, Billy Gorter, added that the campaign was “able to reach one in four Cambodians… which means more than four million Cambodians saw the Virtual Reality campaign on social media, and on average, people saw the message of “reach out, check in and act,” at least 3 times.”

The ‘Virtual Reality’ short film is quite confronting in its depiction of violence, which some viewers may find distressing to watch. Billy Gorter emphasized the importance of representing the reality of violence experienced by women since “Sadly, one in three women globally experience physical, sexual, emotional or economic intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and of the Cambodian women [who have] experienced violence or abuse, 49% of women never talk about it to friends or family, and this is often due to feeling ashamed, blaming themselves for their partners behavior, or the fear of retribution.”

He further explained that they used the theme of virtual reality to convey this message since the use of the virtual reality headset “demonstrates clearly that life isn’t a game, this is someone’s reality and it can happen all around us without us knowing, as women are afraid to speak out.”

Over 2.3 million people have viewed the ‘Virtual Reality’ domestic violence awareness campaign video so far. This Life continues to encourage people to watch, share and comment, so that women can know that they are not alone and that there is still support available to them.

The organization stresses that this campaign is not only about awareness raising, but also asks everyone to "Reach Out, Check In and Act", to make sure that the people around you are okay. They provide resource materials for people in a variety of forms, including audio versions of the Law, telephone numbers of the National Police Hotline and Child Helpline Cambodia.

This Life reminds everyone that domestic violence is a serious problem in communities, and violence against women is associated with a complex interplay of risk factors at the individual, relationship, community and greater society levels, which cannot be understood in isolation.