About this website
Posted: 2011
This website was inspired by the Lukas Moodysson film, Lilya 4-Ever starring Oksana Akinshina as Lilya. Although I knew that life was very hard for many people, it was this great film that really drove the point home for me. It broke my heart to realise that millions of young free spirits like Lilja are suffering terrible injustices right now in all parts of the world. I felt I had to do something. 4-Ever was the result and I hoped that information about prostitution and suicide plus an avalanche of signatures in response to the petitions against human trafficking, sexual slavery, poverty, drug use and violence would make an impact. There have been nowhere near enough signatures to send a petition to Downing Street, however, so…
Petitions are now closed and this website is for information only.
There are still useful links and good information for anyone genuinely interested in the issues.
Lessons learned
It seemed a good idea to make it easy for people to sign petitions but with 4-Ever it did not work because:
- Multi-issue websites don’t work with regards to listing in directories or SEO
- Multi-issue websites are like information overload to visitors
- People already give time to high profile websites
- High profile websites want to stay focused and not trade links
- Information overload in general, plus conditioning by the mass media, means most people use the internet for entertainment so without considerable effort and resources (and this was a hobby for me) it will always be difficult to drive visitors to ‘good cause’ sites or motivate them to act.
“Breathe. Breathe in the air. Don’t be afraid to care.” (Pink Floyd)