As a leader driving Latin America’s green wave, WEC came to Spitfire looking for a strong strategic thought partner that knows how to use the media to shift narratives, tell stories and center leaders as experts to meet its objective.

Its goal more often than not is to influence decision makers in positions of power to shift policy to expand access to abortion and reproductive and sexual health services or at the very least undo extremely regressive policies that continue to harm people in some countries where abortion is still completely banned. This often requires a skill at which Spitfire excels — making news before it happens. 

This recently took place in Honduras, where WEC and leading activists have been desperately pleading with Honduras’ first woman president, Xiomara Castro, to fulfill her campaign promise to overturn a ban on emergency contraception for all people. Leveraging the pop culture significance of Bad Bunny’s music, WEC with Spitfire’s ideation, got to work putting up billboards on the route to his concert using his song lyrics about buying “plan b” to bring attention to him and his fans that plan b was illegal in Honduras. This resulted in a swell of social media pressure and media coverage that ultimately resulted in the President lifting the ban for sexual assault survivors only. While it’s still far from full access, it is undeniably an important step for survivors to have this access in one of the most dangerous countries for women. 

WEC, while strategically not a brand-forward organization, came to Spitfire with a unique challenge: to make it a leading voice on reproductive justice without uplifting its brand. Through building the prominence of its leaders and executing a variety of creative tactics, inserting it into breaking news and leveraging trends and popular culture to break through an already-crowded landscape, Spitfire was able to do so. Through executing a profile building strategy, WEC’s leader, Paula Ávila-Guillén, was invited to speak on the mainstage at the 2022 Gender Equity Summits; has been interviewed on prominent podcasts including Next Question with Katie Couric, Busy Phillips is Doing Her Best and the BBC’s The Conversation; and published op-eds in her name in the Washington Post, CNN, Newsweek and Ms. Magazine. Her social media following both on Twitter and Instagram continue to grow, and she was named one of Politics NY’s Power Women of 2022.