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Unlock Day was supposed to last one day. It ran for a week, drew 81,410 people inside and outside prison, and filled feeds with 5,814,415 unlock emojis, each one a day of education for someone behind bars.1 Together those posts reached 53 million people, with nothing spent on media.
Unlock Day, by the numbers
- 5.8Munlock emojis postedEvery 🔓 shared with #UnlockDay and #Edovo, counted across platforms on unlockday.org.
- 81,410people took partPeople who posted, inside prison through Edovo’s tablets and outside on their own accounts.
- 53Mpeople reachedThe combined audience of everyone who posted.
- $0spent on mediaThe reach came from people sharing, not from paid placement.
A day that turned into a week
The ask was tiny on purpose. Post a 🔓 with #UnlockDay and #Edovo, and Edovo’s donors would pay for a day of education for someone in prison. Post a thousand and you paid for a thousand days.4
It launched on Tuesday, March 25. By Wednesday Edovo had a decision to make. “We’re seeing so much interest to participate that we’re extending Unlock Day now through April 1st,” it told its followers, adding that a new donor had come in to cover even more emojis. Unlock Day became Unlock Week.
That new donor mattered. Before launch, Edovo’s donors had committed to cover five million emojis, a number that sounded ambitious when they made it. By the following week the public had blown past it, and the extra pledge meant every lock still counted.
Unlock emojis counted
| Mar 28 | 4.3M |
|---|---|
| Apr 1 | 5.1M |
| Final | 5.8M |
Totals on the unlockday.org counter during and after Unlock Week.Source: unlockday.org
The counter on unlockday.org became the campaign’s scoreboard. It passed 4.3 million by Friday, 5.1 million as the week closed, and settled at 5,814,415 once every post was in.1
Nine in ten locks came from inside prison
The biggest surprise wasn’t a celebrity. It was who actually did the posting.
People in prison can’t open Instagram. But through Edovo’s tablets, incarcerated learners could post their own #UnlockDay messages to the campaign’s feed, and they did, by the tens of thousands. More than 75,000 posts came from inside. They carried roughly nine of every ten locks counted.
Where the unlock emojis came from
| Posted from inside prison | 88% (88%) |
|---|---|
| Posted from outside | 12% (12%) |
Share of all unlock emojis, by where they were posted.Source: Unlock Day campaign tally
Read the feed and you can feel it. People who already learn on Edovo were paying it forward to people who can’t. One post read Knowledge is power, followed by a row of locks. Another said Keep your head up, be strong, stay safe, then a wall of them. Each post showed how many days it had donated: 4 days, 100 days, 416 days.
The people posting the most locks were the people who already knew what a lesson behind bars is worth.
22 posts, 52 million views
Outside prison, Unlock Day ran on the oldest engine there is: people asking their friends. There were 961 public posts from individuals, more than 4,100 comments and more than 1,000 reposts. Churches, religious groups and corrections staff used the kits we made for them.
Then there were the big accounts. Skai Jackson, Kerry Washington and Chelsea Handler posted, along with Amy Schumer and Rosie O’Donnell, many in Unlock gear made with artist Halim Flowers.1 Just 22 of those large-account posts drove about 52 million of the campaign’s 53 million impressions. A coalition of more than 30 organizations, from MasterClass and The Last Mile to Prison Professors and Compassion Prison Project, posted alongside them. Even the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services shared the lock.5
The gear gave the posts a face. Every lock printed on a tee or hoodie paid for a month of education, so a $1 tee carried one lock and the top piece, an $8,094 hoodie with Halim Flowers’ art, carried one for every day he spent in prison. When Amy Schumer posted in a hoodie carrying Halim’s art, the clothes explained the campaign before the caption did.
None of it was bought. Buena made the idea, the brand, the site with its live counter and post generator, the kits and the celebrity outreach; Edovo’s team and its partners, with PR from Upland Workshop, carried it into the world. Everyone who posted did the rest.
What a week of locks adds up to
A day of education sounds small. Multiply it by 5.8 million and Edovo counts it as more than 193,000 months of learning for people in prison.2 That is time spent on GED prep, job training, parenting classes and reading, in a setting where education cuts the odds of returning to prison by 43%.3
The outpouring of support this week shows there’s a significant desire to ensure we unlock that same transformative opportunity for the half without it.
The second goal was always the bigger one. About a million people in U.S. prisons still can’t reach Edovo, because their states haven’t approved it or their facilities lack the tablets and networks. Nearly every federal prison is on that list. Fifty-three million people have now seen a lock on their feed asking for that to change.
Unlock Week
March 18
The warm-up
Edovo’s channels start posting learner stories and the five-million-emoji commitment.
March 25
Unlock Day
The first National Unlock Day launches on unlockday.org and across social media.
March 26
Extended
Demand pushes Edovo to extend through April 1, and a new donor covers more emojis.
April 4
The final count
Edovo reports more than 81,000 people, 53 million reached and 5.8 million locks.
Unlock Day is built to return every March 25. The site, the counter, the generator and the kits are ready. Next year the lock has a head start.
Sources
- Edovo, unlockday.org: final counts and participants
- Edovo Foundation on TikTok, Unlock Day wrap-up, April 4, 2025
- RAND Corporation, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education,” 2013
- Prison Professors, “Unlock Day: Edovo Foundation,” 2025
- Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, “Edovo: Unlock Day,” March 25, 2025
