Following the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women, today we are announcing a global expansion of Driving Change — our commitment to help address the global epidemic of gender-based violence. It’s an issue that tragically affects all communities, including the Uber community, and we are working to be part of the solution.

Today we’re pleased to share that this initiative is expanding with the launch of partnerships, education, and advocacy efforts throughout Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

At the core of our commitment is our goal to educate ourselves as a company on this issue, and to learn from experts on ways to incorporate their valuable insights into our company practices, product features, and educational information for our riders and drivers.  

In 2017, we pledged $5 million over five years to support the sexual violence prevention programs of leading organizations around the world, starting in the US. Our partners, A Call to Men, Casa de Esperanza, National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, National Network to End Domestic Violence, NO MORE, Raliance and the Women of Color Network, Inc., reflect the diversity of people impacted and continue to teach us every day.

As we expand our work, we are thrilled to announce our two newest US partners: Futures Without Violence, a leading gender-based violence prevention organization dedicated to developing groundbreaking programs, policy development, and public action campaigns designed to prevent and end violence against women and children around the world; and RAINN, a national nonprofit that manages the National Sexual Assault Hotline and provides valuable assistance to people reporting sexual violence.

We are now also expanding our education efforts worldwide, beginning with Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia.

In addition to bringing together sexual violence experts with hundreds of Uber managers and employees throughout these regions, we are also activating Uber’s extensive global community of riders and drivers to share important prevention information. In the US, UK and Australia, we are sharing information and educational materials through a video in partnership with NO MORE. In Brazil and Mexico, teams are providing information on gender sensitization to driver partners, couriers, and users in partnership with Promundo. And in India, the Uber team is working with Manas Foundation to host gender equality education for Uber drivers.

Our full list of international partners include: Latin America: Associação Mulheres pela Paz, Inter-American Network of Women’s Shelters, Gendes, Vital Voices, Instituto Patrícia Galvão, Instituto Igarapé and Promundo; UK: UKSNM; Australia and New Zealand: WESNET and Sexual Abuse Prevention Network.

In addition to working with prevention experts, we’ve also spent a lot of time listening to and meeting with women law enforcement leaders from across the country and corporate leaders in the travel and transportation industries, seeking ways we can all work to help put an end to sexual violence.

We’ve also taken a number of key steps on our platform and within Uber, itself, including: eliminating forced arbitration for individual claims of sexual assault and sexual harassment for all drivers, riders and employees; committing to release a first-of-its-kind transparency report; creating a taxonomy to better classify sexual assault and misconduct claims; launching new safety features; and strengthening our background screenings.   

But even with all this activity, we believe we are still taking our first steps. We look forward to building on the progress we’ve made, and could not do it without the help and support of our global prevention partners.