Open research proposal — seeking a coordinator and consortium partners
SAFEFEED: preventing gender-based
cyberviolence against women and girls
Gender-based cyberviolence — misogynistic abuse, sexualised harassment, body shaming, cyberstalking and gender-based threats — pushes women, girls and gender-diverse people to self-censor, withdraw or leave public conversations altogether. Civil-society organisations, educators and public-facing people rarely have the moderation capacity, protocols or referral pathways to respond.
SAFEFEED proposes a multi-country prevention model: human-supervised comment moderation on public Facebook and Instagram pages, training for the professionals who run those channels, digital-safety and bystander workshops, and referral pathways to victim-support services — with people of all genders involved as bystanders and allies, not only as victims.
It responds to CERV-2026-DAPHNE-PREVENTION, the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme's call for targeted actions preventing gender-based violence. ZenFeed — a Polish moderation-technology initiative — and Proyecto ART, a Barcelona clinical-psychology organisation, are the two core proposers; a coordinator with a CERV/Daphne track record is still needed.
Status: early-stage proposal. Consortium and coordinator are under construction. If you're a women's-rights, LGBTIQ+, equality, research or victim-support organisation working on this — we want to talk to you.
24 months
indicative project duration
€500k–600k
indicative EU grant requested
Nov 2026
CERV-2026-DAPHNE deadline (verify in portal)
The problem
Three pressures push women and girls out of public life online.
Visibility becomes exposure.
Misogynistic abuse, sexualised harassment, body shaming and gender-based threats create an environment where being visible online can mean being targeted — pushing some people to self-censor or withdraw from public conversations altogether.
Toxic content travels further than it should.
Research reviewed by ZenFeed finds that emotionally charged, identity-based attacks spread disproportionately, while automatically hiding toxic content has been shown to reduce both exposure and the toxicity users go on to post themselves.
Civil society lacks continuous capacity.
NGOs, educators and public-facing organisations often have no continuous moderation capacity, no shared detection and reporting protocols, and no referral pathways — while the staff who do moderate are repeatedly exposed to abusive content with no safeguards.
The call
What DAPHNE-PREVENTION asks for.
This is the official call's own list of priorities, not our self-declaration — SAFEFEED is designed to address each of them directly.
Prevention
Measures that prevent cyberviolence before it happens.
Digital literacy
Stronger digital literacy among online users.
Positive narratives
Positive narratives on gender equality and women's public participation.
NGO empowerment
Empowerment of NGOs and relevant actors to prevent and address cyberviolence.
Detection & reporting
Improved detection and reporting of early signs of violence.
Professional capacity
Increased professional capacity.
Changing norms
Awareness of prejudices, stereotypes and norms that tolerate gender-based violence.
Inclusive bystander action
Norm-change action involving people of all genders, including men and boys, without framing any group as inherently responsible for abuse.
What we propose to contribute
A production moderation system with real comments.
ZenFeed already moderates public Facebook and Instagram comments in production. This is what it would adapt and bring to a SAFEFEED consortium.
Objectives and work packages
One overall objective, six specific objectives, seven work packages.
To prevent gender-based cyberviolence and protect equal participation online, by equipping women and girls, gender-diverse people, civil-society organisations and professionals with practical safety tools, prevention skills, response capacity and norm-changing interventions.
Coordination, governance and participation
Governance, a lived-experience Advisory Group, quality, inclusion and risk — led by the coordinator.
Prevention framework and protocols
Needs mapping, a cyberviolence taxonomy, and moderation, reporting and referral protocols — led by a women's-rights or cyberviolence specialist.
Moderation adaptation and deployment
Gender-based harm categories, multilingual configuration, transparency and human-oversight dashboards — led by ZenFeed.
Professional capacity and support
Training, psychological first response, reporting, referral and moderator wellbeing — led by Proyecto ART with specialist partners.
Digital literacy and norm change
Workshops for the primary target groups, inclusive bystander action and positive narratives — led by youth, women's-rights, LGBTIQ+ and equality partners.
Multi-country prevention pilots
Integrated implementation across five to six countries and twenty to thirty public channels — led by deployment partners.
Evaluation, policy and sustainability
Ethics, baseline and follow-up evaluation, policy recommendations and transfer — led by a university or research partner.
Safeguarding & ethics
Prevention, not therapy — with safeguards built into the design.
Participation by women, girls, gender-diverse people and other groups at heightened risk will be voluntary, accessible and trauma-informed, with parental consent obtained where legally required. Data will be minimised, pseudonymised where possible and covered by a DPIA and independent ethics review before pilot research begins.
Design rule:
The project does not provide therapy, diagnosis, crisis intervention or emergency support. Human override, review and redress are built into every moderation workflow, and referral pathways cover psychological, legal and immediate-safety concerns.
Who's already on board
Two core proposers, looking for a coordinator.
SAFEFEED starts from an existing partnership between a Polish moderation-technology initiative and a Barcelona mental-health specialist organisation.
ZenFeed
A Polish technology initiative building an autonomous, AI-supported moderation tool for public Facebook and Instagram comments, already processing around 50,000 comments a month in production.
Proyecto ART
A Barcelona-based clinical-psychology and mental-health organisation working on body image, eating disorders, adolescents and social media, and the mental-health consequences of online hostility.
Neither partner is positioned to run SAFEFEED alone: it needs a coordinator with a CERV/Daphne track record, plus women's-rights, LGBTIQ+, victim-support, research and public-authority partners to reach the priority target groups. See who we're looking for below.
Who we're looking for
Partners for a consortium that doesn't exist yet.
Coordinator
A women's-rights, gender-equality or cyberviolence NGO with a CERV/Daphne track record, to lead the grant.
Thematic & support partners
Women's-rights, youth, LGBTIQ+, equality, victim-support and hotline organisations reaching the priority target groups.
Research & institutional partners
A university or research centre for ethics and evaluation, a digital-rights/AI-ethics partner, and an optional public authority.
All consortium roles sought
Coordinator; women's-rights, youth, LGBTIQ+ and equality partners; a university or research centre; a victim-support, hotline or legal partner; a sports, media or education partner with visible reach; a European network for transfer and dissemination; a digital-rights/AI-ethics partner; and, optionally, a public authority for policy uptake.
The requested grant, duration and deadline above are indicative and will be confirmed once the consortium and coordinator are in place — verify the deadline in the EU Funding & Tenders Portal before submission.
Let's talk.
Download the Partner Identification Form, or write to us directly.