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Free the Children: We Day!

wedaypicsquareWe here at Engine are really excited about a new opportunity we’ve had recently to help out a fantastic organization and cause. We’re going to be assisting our friends at Free the Children to spread the word, and raise awareness about the best day of the year: We Day! Take a look at the info below. If you know anyone who might want to volunteer their time, or any teens who might want to participate, please contact me, and I’ll put you in touch with the people who can help.

I’ll be traveling to Toronto to volunteer with the Media Team for We Day on October 5th, and I am so excited! Thanks to everyone at Engine Communications (especially Shaun Levy) for allowing me the time to help out with this amazing cause.

If you are a blogger and want to donate some space on your site, I have access to some gorgeous banners you could upload to promote the event to your readers. If all you can do is share this note on your Facebook profile, or retweet it on Twitter, I’d greatly appreciate it.

If you are on Twitter, please follow @realmetowe , @CraigKielburger , @robininkenya and @sarahamil.

Information From Free the Children:

 
We Day, Toronto, 2008 (courtesy Free the Children)

We Day, Toronto, 2008 (courtesy Free the Children)

About We Day 

A Free The Children initiative, We Day is like a rock concert for social change, celebrating the power of young people to change the lives of others. It brings together some of Canada’s top social issues speakers and entertainers to the stage, in front of a roaring audience of 16,000 student leaders who want to change the world. Hundreds of thousands more tune in online to watch it live.

Our first two We Days in 2007 and 2008 have already created a movement of youth taking action. We Day 2009 promises to be bigger, better and packed with even more inspiration than ever before, enabling thousands of young people to take action on social issues in their communities and abroad.

– Over 15,000 students from more than 1,000 school groups and 40 different school boards have attended the We Day event;
– Young people in the audience brought the messages back to their school, directly impacting more than 832,000 students.

Performers

**Still more to be announced!!

– Hedley – multi-platinum recording artists
– Elie Wiesel – Nobel Laureate, Humanitarian
– Jessi Cruickshank – MTV host
– Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim – eTalk
– Jeff Skoll – Founder of eBay & Chairman of Participant Media
– Dr. Jeffrey Sachs – Professor, Director of The Earth Institute, Economist and Author
– Robert Kennedy Jr. – Author & Environmentalist
– Michael “Pinball” Clemons – community activist and CEO, Toronto Argonauts
– Louise Kent – activist and musician
– Robin Wiszowaty – activist and author
– Craig Kielburger – Founder, Free The Children
– Marc Kielburger – Co-Founder, Free The Children

* We Day is a Free The Children initiative. The event is made possible at no cost to students and schools through the sponsorship and support of numerous companies and organizations. National Bank Financial is the title sponsor of the event.

 
Marc & Craig Kielburger, Founders of Free the Children (courtesy Free the Children)

Marc & Craig Kielburger, Founders of Free the Children (courtesy Free the Children)

 About Free the Children 

Free The Children is the world’s largest network of children helping children through education, with more than one million youth involved in innovative education and development programs in 45 countries. Founded in 1995 by international child rights activist Craig Kielburger, Free The Children has a proven track record of success. Through the energy and passion of youth, Free The Children has built more than 500 schools around the world and it provides education for 50,000 children everyday. The organization has received the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (also known as the Children’s Nobel Prize), the Human Rights Award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, and has formed successful partnerships with leading school boards and Oprah’s Angel Network. For more information please visit www.freethechildren.com and become a fan on Facebook.

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Lost in Translation?

j0433180Keeping close with our discussion last week about the uses of social media (SM) for non-profits, I feel there’s been enough interest that it might be useful to explore this topic further. I’ve had a lot of questions about the point of it all, and if there’s really any value in SM marketing our respective causes. My answer is a careful, “Yes.”

Why be careful?

I’m cautious because of many of your comments. There’s a fine line for people/business when addressing their values in terms of the non-profits they give to. Sometimes the best brand ambassadors are those who are willing to step out on a limb and declare thier allegiance to an organization they support. Other times, that’s not the case.

I don’t believe our giving should be made public in a ‘What’s in it For Me’ sense. I reluctantly put out the ‘Challenge’ knowing that it might turn some people off. But the point wasn’t simply in the gift. It was to start a discussion, and it did.

I’m the last person who would encourage anyone to use a medium knowing that it wasn’t appropriate for their messaging. There were lots of cons to the way my challenge was set up–let’s face it–and I don’t use client time that way. That was an opinion piece. I’m glad I did it. But working (obviously) for a marketing agency, my goal is to identify the best communications strategies for our clients, and to implement them. Not to simply ‘experiment.’ We create results at Engine, and we have the numbers to prove it.

However, I have just as many questions about Twitter, Facebook, and all things social as many of you do. It’s a new platform, and it’s still evolving. It needs to be tested.

I’m tired of reading lists of ‘Top 5 Twitter Uses’ and ‘Twenty Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following.’ What do those things even mean? How do they translate to results for business? That’s part of the greater challenge: to find meaningful value that creates results for clients, and also serves to make the world a slightly better place.

I have given a brief overview of some of the lessons learned in the challenge, and the implications of it, last week. I won’t go over them all today. Today is about movement.

How do we help our clients create worth using SM?

We move. We don’t stop at simply talking, following and tweeting. We don’t stop at creating relationships and networking online. We meet each other in person. We discuss how to connect, what values we share, and how those things translate into the ‘real world.’ Then we actually implement the changes.

The worst thing we could do is let the action get lost in translation.

We know that one of the least comfortable positions from which to move as a person, or in business, is from the reactive. Proactive is the place to be. That is where I see the value for non-profit and business in SM.

Being proactive means not just talking, but doing. I can’t stress this enough. SM is a piece of the puzzle, but it doesn’t create the whole picture. However, we can’t brush it off as being a waste of time.

To all you naysayers: I get it. I wasn’t a SM convert from the get-go either. It took about a year for me to start really understanding how it could benefit those I work for and with.

Now that I see it though, I don’t want the value to get lost. I think there are many truths that still need disseminating about SM. Part of that entails generating more conversation. I think a larger part will take people walking the talk.

What are you doing about it?

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Guerrilla Good: Reflections on Non-Profit Marketing & Social Media

42-16610980Yesterday I put together a small challenge telling people that if @wvcanadanews, or World Vision Canada, got 200 new followers on their Twitter profile by midnight, I would donate $100 to the cause. Not a huge donation, but as I explained that wasn’t really the point of it. The point was to encourage community. It was also to serve as an experiment in ways that messages spread on Twitter, and how we can help our clients by exploring the implications of these trends.

Lessons Learned

  1. Social media spreads the message, but it doesn’t necessarily produce buy-in. Our unique hits were way up on the website yesterday after this post got spread. Unfortunately that didn’t translate into 200 new followers for @wvcanadanews. They only got 45. However, people’s values have to line up with the cause. I support World Vision because international aid is something I’ve seen first-hand; it’s affected me. Not everyone feels the same way, and that’s a good thing. It keeps non-profits, and marketers, accountable.
  2. Quality takes precedence over quantity. Although @wvcanadanews only got 45 new followers, my hope is that those are 45 people who believe in the cause enough to do something about it. We need to value those people as brand ambassadors. Then we must encourage them to take the next step; to give, volunteer, or get involved with a broader campaign.
  3. World Vision is a global organization with high brand recognition. We need to consider this when translating social media marketing to our local non-profits. Their online communities won’t have the same following. But we can still use the platform to drive traffic to their websites, especially during campaign time, with a little creativity.
  4. Trust and reputation mean a lot. Without RT’s by some key individuals with solid followings in the social media world, this challenge would never have spread. Special thanks to @DannyBrown, @ChrisBrogan, @BJMendelson, @LenKendall, and @Barb_G for taking the time to give us exposure. These people all have  Twitter ‘celebrity’ status.  Being prolific bloggers, authors, and communicators, they are opinion leaders in the field. Their reputations go before them, and that is very important in the SM world. I really appreciate their help and constructive feedback.
  5. We get by with a little help from our friends. Building community is all about quality relationships. If you’re going to use Twitter you need to appreciate that you’re dealing with real people. Their time and opinions are valuable. Be thankful when they RT you. Congratulate them on their successes. Help them spread their messages. And realize that because we’re working with a variety of personal values, some of your followers will agree with your message and others won’t. That’s ok. Be open to being challenged. Friends like @charlottehrb, @brettkopf, @chuckhemann, @NeilGasson, @ShannonBoudjema and @Ariel54 did a lot of the leg work in promoting this challenge. Thank you all so much!
  6. Testing the waters is necessary. We just don’t have enough case studies and metrics on the effectiveness of social media marketing to see which methods work best to add value to our organizations. We can have a million followers without increasing our sales, or securing donations. The future of SM will be in discovering what works and what doesn’t. Taking chances is the only way to do it. With experimentation it will be easier to set realistic goals for our clients’ online marketing campaigns.

Social media is a small part of the marketing pie, but the inherently relational nature of the medium makes it a great forum to work with. We need to question the SM platform as it evolves, and use it accordingly. As a professional, I’m eager to see the results of campaigns like mycharitywater.org which take social media and community to the next level by producing measurable results.

What are your thoughts on using SM for non-profit clients? What is the future of community and giving online? We’d love to hear what you and your organization are doing.

Special thanks goes out to the whole @wvcanadanews team: @AlexSancton, @WV_Andrew and @alicians. (The donation is yours, despite the fact that we didn’t reach the goal.)

World Humanitarian Day

I’ve had the pleasure lately of talking to some amazing people working in the field of humanitarian relief. Through my association with a small non-profit called Streams of Hope, my world has been opened to the plight of the poor and oppressed.

In honour of World Humanitarian Day, I want to showcase their work, their visions, and their organizations. Here are some snippets of their interviews with me. Please see the Streams of Hope blog for their full stories.

Dave Toycen, President of World Vision Canada

 

dtpicsmallWhat we’re seeing in eastern DRC is an incredible humanitarian crisis – absolutely one of the worst in the world right now.

Nearly 1.5 million people are displaced, women and girls are the victims of sexual violence and children are recruited as soldiers daily. An estimated 45,000 people are dying every month from malnutrition and infectious diseases in the region – a number we would certainly not tolerate here in Canada.

For me personally, this was one of the most difficult trips I have taken in a long time.

World Vision began working in the DRC in 1958, helping girls who would otherwise have been forced into early marriage. By 1988, World Vision had established longer-term community-based projects, through child sponsorship, and is now assisting 56,000 sponsored children in the country.

We are currently working with communities through 25 long-term development programs. We are working to improve water and sanitation, develop infrastructure, improve health and education, in addition to responding to HIV and AIDS while improving food security through special, shorter-term projects.

We are helping 50,000 children recover from the trauma of war in eastern DRC through a UNICEF-funded psychosocial and child protection project. We are also helping families in crisis with survival items like blankets, soap, plastic sheeting for temporary shelters and other emergency help to children and their families.

Kevin McCort, President of CARE Canada

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I’m worried that the message the public is hearing (which are not always what people are saying) is that Aid Doesn’t Work. My counter-message is “Aid Does Work… if it’s done the right way”.

CARE has combined conservation farming with village savings and loans. In Zimbabwe there are food shortages and food is very expensive. But the 87 families participating in that community garden are now fairly food-secure. They’ve increased their crop yields, with the VS&L they can afford agricultural tools and inputs, and they’re producing enough to sell for income. I’ve got a great photo of one woman named Rumbizwi Seminrufo proudly holding up a handful of ripe tomatoes and grinning from ear to ear. She’s living proof that, if you do it right, even in the most challenging environments, aid can work.

Ultimately, these arguments point to a radical scaling up of developmental assistance.

We actually have to try harder and we must channel the bulk of this assistance through civil society organizations who are the most effective. The only way this will happen though is if the tax-paying public hear the message that Aid Does Work, and demand that their tax dollars, and their charitable giving, go through the most effective channels to make it happen.

Eugene Cho, Executive Director of One Day’s Wages

EugeneCho

My conviction is that humanity was created for good, justice, and compassion. At the core of our hearts, I believe we are created with an inclination towards such things. However, I also acknowledge the darkness and proclivity towards evil that lurks with all of us and as such, there’s a constant tension.

For me as a Christian, I believe in God and the goodness, peace, and shalom He intended for all of humanity. As a human and a follower of Christ, pursuing ‘mercy, justice, & humility’ are not optional. When I pursue these things, not only do I honor my convictions, my faith in Christ, but it is when I feel most alive…when I feel I am living in the fullness of what I was created to be and do.

One Day’s Wages is a grassroots movement where we invite the global community to simply give one day’s wages to fight extreme global poverty. Our goal is to integrate human relationships + social media/technology + vision + collaboration = end extreme global poverty.

My sincerest thanks and appreciation goes out to each of these men, and to all of their staff, families, and to the myriad of others working in social justice around the world.

You might not connect your business with social justice, but you should. The impact that your organization has on the world counts, no matter how big or small. Consider corporate social responsibility the next big thing in business.

Contact Engine Communications to see how you can help.