Right Our Story

COVID-19 halted our society for months, and with its origins tied to China, Asian hate incidents and crimes were on the rise in the US. Many people unfairly tied the virus to the Asian Community, holding them responsible for the pandemic.

In California, it became difficult to turn on the news or scroll through social media without hearing another story of AAPI hate. Soon, kids started to model what they heard at home, and many Asian children became victims of race-based bullying because of their backgrounds.

They were not alone. Too many young people in California face discrimination, violence, and abuse, due to their race, ethnicity, language, culture, and country of origin.

So, in 2022, The State of California decided to do something about it. The State’s Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) partnered with Media Cause to create a campaign to combat the rise in race-based bullying amongst school-age children in California (K-12).

To shift the narrative about race-based bullying, we focused on using inclusive language to define bullying and remove labels, leading with youth to empower them to be the change, building trust, and showing youth that this campaign was here to stay.

We named the campaign Right Our Story because everyone has played a role in bullying, whether as a bystander, a bully, or a victim. It’s only by talking openly about the how and the why behind these experiences and roles that we can start changing the narrative.

To bring Right Our Story to life, we built a microsite, a private community dedicated to youth, hosted a week of action, and launched an anonymous bullying reporting tool. This was supported by a cross-channel media campaign on social, OOH placements, and programmatic vendors.

The campaign gave youth a safe space to discuss bullying and drive change in their community—all while generating millions of impressions and ad clicks, hundreds of thousands of site visitors and social discussions, and 1,804 submissions of heartbreaking bullying experiences shared through the story submission form and bullying incident reporting tool.