WHOF’s website www.WHOF.net reached an amazing SIX MILLION hits on February 6th, 2012 marking a new milestone for the website that makes it their mission to represent, go to bat for and protect equal rights.
WHOF.net which works in tandem with the Wipeout Homophobia On Facebook facebook group, and has been running for just 17 months, hosts a plethora of support and information pages.
The pages deal with and are a resource for subjects such as Suicide, Bullying, Sexuality, Gender, and Coming out, as well as monthly guest writer pages; in addition to a great page on Alan Turing Year and a hilarious page of replies to hate mail received by WHOF founder Kevin O’Neil.
“WHOF, all started on the 9th May 2010. During a search for a gay group I found two hate pages. They only had a few members, but all I could think was what if one of my family members found this page and read the hate speech.”
I decided to “report” both pages. Hate speech is illegal in most of the free world and is also against Facebook’s own terms of use.
I sent links to the pages to some friends so they too could report them, they replied with links to others I thought that rather than 30 of us sending each other messages, I would collate the links on one Facebook page. An hour later there were hundreds of members and by the end of the day a thousand had joined, today there are over 310,000 members” Says Kevin, from Durham in the North east of England, who later created the website to accompany the facebook page in September of 2010.
The page is run solely by volunteers and the website is paid for through donations, with the shortfall being paid by Kevin himself.
“WHOF has become a huge gathering of LGBT support from all over the world. We educate each other. We have a lot of “straight” supporters who learn a lot about us too. This is community engagement, resource sharing, discussion, encouragement, on a global scale”
The website is going from strength to strength and guest writer’s pages garner over a quarter of a million hits per month. The guest book is strewn with thank you messages from parents and teens who have aborted suicide attempts after receiving support from WHOF administrators and members.
“I think I am most proud of Lyndsay Winegarden” says Kevin, “She has fibromyalgia, is in constant pain AND has a young son, and yet still finds the time to monitor WHOF’s facebook page AND run her own support group called STOP Teenage Suicide, she truly is an amazing woman and an inspiration.”
Be sure to visit WHOF.net and/or get connected and become a fan @ Wipeout Homophobia on Facebook. This is a very special project and resource for equal rights!
