In February 2025, we had the incredible honor of hosting the in-person workshop “Learning from the Majority World Digital Security Helplines: How to Intertwine Digital and Empathic Care?” at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei.
Co-hosted by Lu Ortiz from Vita-Activa.Org, LuAn Méndez from Internet Bolivia and Rocío Jiménez from the Access Now’s Helpline, our session brought together a powerful circle of practitioners, allies, and human rights defenders from across the globe to spotlight how feminist digital security helplines in the Global Majority are shaping new paradigms of care.
This wasn’t just a panel. It was a deeply grounding, emotionally resonant space — and a call to reimagine what digital security support should look like: contextual, intersectional, and rooted in empathy.
Context Matters: What the Global Majority Teaches Us
Participants heard firsthand how helplines in Latin America, South Asia, and Africa navigate profound digital divides, political repression, and gendered violence — all while building safe, community-driven, culturally aware digital care practices.
From physical comfort and building spaces of trust and safety, to linguistic nuance and emotional support, we explored how care shows up in environments where traditional digital literacy training isn’t enough. These are contexts where surveillance is heavy, trauma is ongoing, and where “help” can often feel extractive if not carefully given. What we heard again and again is this: Support must be relational, not transactional.
Empathy + Tech: Not Either/Or, But Both
Many helpline workers shared that empathic care isn’t an add-on — it’s foundational. From recognizing that users might want privacy or anonymity, to creating infrastructure that doesn’t just solve a problem but acknowledges its emotional and political weight, the message was clear: digital support has to be human.
Some highlights from the conversation included:
- Using shared language, not just linguistically but emotionally and culturally, to meet people where they are.
- Recognizing that technical help without emotional consent can be harmful.
- Avoiding the “just press this button” mindset — especially when trauma, shame, or fear are present.
- Making space for uncertainty, slowness, and emotional processing.
Participants reflected on their own experiences, echoing a need to turn away from quick fixes and towards presence, transparency, and radical care. - Repairing emotional and social damages goes hand in hand with managing expectations from those who are cared for and listened to.
Key Takeaways
Here are five essential learnings from the session:
- Empathic digital security is possible — and already happening in the Global Majority.
- Technology is not going to solve the social and political upheaval.
- Safe, inclusive, community spaces are critical to both digital and emotional resilience.
- Intersectionality isn’t theoretical — it’s a daily reality helplines must account for to be effective.
- We need to bridge the gap between Global North tech frameworks and the real needs of at-risk users in surveilled and censored environments.
What’s Next? Growing the Network
Our session didn’t end when we left the room. We see it as part of an ongoing movement — one that connects technologists, caregivers, and organizers across borders.
Moving forward, we’re inviting participants and allies to:
- Join monthly dialogue calls focused on the emotional and political work of digital support, enriched by anonymized case studies and collective reflection.
- Contribute to a growing resource library featuring context-specific strategies and shared tools.
- Participate in our annual VitaFest event — a space to reconnect, learn, and build stronger practices together.
- Stay connected via Vita-Activa.org and our blog, where we’ll continue to document and amplify the lessons from this and future collaborations.
Final Reflection
Too often, conversations around digital safety are dominated by the Global North — by frameworks and solutions that fail to see or serve the whole person. What our session at RightsCon made clear is that there is tremendous wisdom in the lived experience and adaptive practices of digital helplines from the Global Majority.
Our helplines are not just offering support — they are modeling a new kind of digital solidarity, one that understands that digital harm is never just digital, and that care is a form of resistance.
To Access Now for sponsoting our teip to Taiwan and for opening the space for conversations like these to happen, gracias. To our copanelists and everyone who joined us: thank you. Let’s keep learning from each other, listening deeply, and caring radically.
If you’re weighed down by violence, feel free to reach out:
[email protected] | [email protected] | +52 1 55-8171-1117 (Signal/WhatsApp)