Understanding & Responding to Sexual Violence

my home page- including information about me & the project and the most recent tweets from the #MeToo Movement
one example of a data visualization I created- North Carolina has over 15,000 forensic rape kits in their backlog!
a heat map of women's responses saying they think it is acceptable for a husband to beat his wife for specific reasons
The victim resource page, which includes an interactive map that you can click on your state learn how to report/get help
A brief summary of restorative justice including a table that explains how multiple community members may be hurt by sexual violence
Resources for victims of sexual violence and IPV should have an "emergency exit," like this button which scrolls down the page with you

I am a recent graduate of University of Maryland, College Park with a major in computer science and a minor in women's studies. I've always wanted to use my technological skills to contribute meaningfully to social good and especially women's issues. This project was inspired by my course work at University of Maryland (in both fields), the work of my sister (who contributes to research on restorative practices being applied to schools), and 36 hours straight to code (and StackOverflow)!

Past - Sexual Violence: A Story Through Data

During my last semester at University of Maryland, I took an introduction to data science course and found the process of data exploration, visualization, and analysis super fun and fascinating. When brainstorming, I realized there was a ton of openly available data sources that could create a wholistic, insightful view of sexual violence. I gathered U.S.-focused data, global data, and even non-traditional data (like Google N-grams data). All data and data sources are credited and explained in depth on my webpage.

Present - Resources for Victims

When I was researching data and information for this project, I was shocked at how difficult it seemed to be to find state-by-state resources or policies related to sexual violence. I even saw during my data visualization and data analysis "Past" section that the definition of sexual offense is not consistent from state to state. During my search, I began finding some tools hidden in the depths of large organizations, like RAINN, that were useful but difficult to locate in their large websites. I felt that victims deserved an easier and more effective way to locate resources. I make the national hotline front and center and provide multiple tools for locating local or state-level resources and shelters. This portion of the project was completed with HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript.

Future - Restorative Practices

Finally, I was inspired by my women's studies coursework, and my sister's restorative practice work in education to introduce TechTogether to restorative/transformative justice work. It also includes some digital art pieces I made using GIMP.