digital advocacy mobilizing the girl effect
TRANSCRIPT
Digital Advocacy: Mobilizing the Girl Effect
Presentation for Be Good, Be Social
October 27th, 2011
The Girl Issue: The Power and Plight of Girls
Advocacy: Creating Change
Digital Communications & Advocacy : Engaging One Million
Case Study: The International Day of the Girl
Outline
Digital advocacy is a key method of broadening issue awareness, mobilizing support, and raising funds to improve people’s lives.
Our Point
The Girl Issue: The Power and Plight of Girls
The Plight and Power of GIRLS
“As you educate a woman, you educate the family. If you educate the girls, you educate the future.”
- Queen Rania of Jordan
“There is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls. If we want to succeed in our efforts to build a more healthy, peaceful and equitable world, the classrooms of the world have to be filled with girls as well as boys.”
- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General
“Blocking women and girls from getting the skills and earnings to succeed in a globalized world is not only wrong, but also economically harmful,”
- Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank’s chief economist.
In The Words of….
The Because I am a Girl Initiative
• Plan Canada’s initiative to raise awareness of the double discrimination girl’s face as a result of being young and female.
• A social movement to unleash the power of Canadian girls and women to claim a brighter future for girls in the developing world.
- Girls have the right to be educated. - Girls have the right to eat. - Girls have the right to be safe. - Girls' rights are human rights.
• Because I am a Girl is all about harnessing the incredible power that girls and women have here at home and in the developing world, to change the future.
• We want to engage 1 million girls, women and everyone who matters to them, to join this movement for change.
Advocacy: Creating Change
Pillars
• Because I am a Girl is composed of 4 streams:»Awareness / Education»Engagement / Advocacy»Fundraising / Donation
» Impact
Providing equal access to:
Clean water
Education
Health care
Microfinance
Nutrition & Food Security
Advocacy Defined
• Our goal: is to enable citizens to gain access to, and have a voice in, the decision-making of relevant institutions; such as government or UN
• Our definition: For our purposes, effective advocacy will mean getting our information on the right table, before the right people, at the right time to create policy change and bring a clear improvement to people’s lives.
• Our platform of advocacy: The International Day of the Girl
• Our supporters involvement: This is an issue that I care about
International Day of the Girl
What?
September 22 - Day of the Girl – We want Canada to be leaders that will then encourage other nations and ultimately the UN to declare Sept 22 as International day of the girl.
Why?
National and international days not only bring attention to a specific group but also enable the government to be held to task yearly on what they are doing for that group and their progress.
How?
Our petition and public awareness activities will help us put pressure on the government to enact this day. We want a politician to jump on our bandwagon and do the leg work to have a bill submitted to the house that will ultimately become legislation.
Timeline
2009 2010 2011
International Day of the Girl Plan
• Launch petition
• Public awareness around the day
• Political engagement for Sept 22
• Public awareness around the day
• March 2011 – all party resolution
• September 22 – petition presented in Parliament
• Public awareness around the day
• UN engagement
Advocacy as Foundation of Initiative• Greater awareness can be achieved as people
invest their time & actions
• Gateway to grassroots involvement – creating strong ties of support out of weak leads
• Advocacy creates non-revenue driven actions for supporters to “get involved”
• End goal depends on supporters having strong ties to the issue at hand
• Wins can be shared with all of those involved
• Girls basic human rights
• Petitions• Issue Leadership, lead by experts• Demonstration/rallying• Letter writing• Media• Parliament Representation
The Advocacy Toolbox
Tribune, State Library of NSW)
Attracting An Advocate?
Potential supporters may ask ….
• Cause itself – is it important to me?
• Awareness – who is involved? Have I heard of this before?
• Identification – Is there a place for me to connect to this cause or movement?
• Accessibility – How easy or difficult is it for me to get involved?
• Activation – Im interested, now what?
• Sense of urgency is communicated – they need my help now
• Ask is clear & Direct – I need to sign this, send this, spread the word
The Stats• 50% of Canadians have a social media
profile
• Age breakdown: 18-34 {82%}, 35-54 {62%}, 55+ {43%}
• 45% visit a social media ‘site’ at least once a week
• 86% of those using social media have a Facebook profile
• Twitter –19% this year – a dramatic increase
• Online Canadian women are much more likely to visit a social networking site at least once a day than men (37% compared to 24% of men).
Source Ipsos Reid: http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5286
Digital Advocacy : Engaging One Million
Source: http://www.nowlebanon.com/BlogDetails.aspx?TID=1207&FID=6
Digital Advocacy: “clicktivism”?
The Ladder of Engagement
Why Digital Advocacy?
• Accessibility
• Reach
• Inclusion as agents of change
• Community
• Speed
• Cost
• Facilitates development of POV over time
• Easier to measure success
Digital Advocacy and Awareness
Digital Advocacy and Fundraising
• Advocates are 7x more likely to donate
From Blackbaud white paper “Connecting Online Advocacy and Fundraising”: http://www.blackbaud.com/bb/advocacy/online-advocacy.aspx
Digital Advocacy as Bridge
• Weak to strong ties
• Light to heavy engagement
• Links Awareness to Fundraising
The Digital Advocacy Toolbox
• e-petitions• downloadable letters to government
representatives• blogs• RSS feeds• digital press kits • e-blasts and e-newsletters• social networks (i.e. Facebook)• micro-blogs (i.e. Twitter)• multimedia photos & videos (i.e. Flickr,
YouTube)• mobile: SMS text messaging & apps• instant messaging services• advertising (i.e. Facebook Ads)
Case Study: International Day of the Girl
International Day of the Girl – 2011
Goals
• Inform people about the issue
• Encourage action
• Deepen relationships & engagement
Approach
• Coordinated communications across all digital platforms
Approach & Tactics
Website• e-petition
• downloadable letter to MP
Blog• Q & A with MP
• What is advocacy all about?
• Speakers Bureau: Real Live Advocates for Girls
• Guest Post: Jenn Heil – International Day of the Girl
• 22 Facts About Girls’ Rights
• The International Day of the Girl Takes the Hill!
Facebook• e-petition
• Change profile photo to ’22’ logo
• Change status
• Updates
Email / Newsletter• targeted action alerts
• progress updates
Twitter• 22 Facts about Girls Rights
YouTube• Video – Nobel Peace Prize Winner supports Day of the Girl
Results
• E-petition signatures • Letters to MPs
• At least 75 people changed their profile photo to the ’22’ logo on Sept. 22
• Average Facebook user has 130 friends*– potential reach of nearly 10,000
* Source: Facebook
• 22 facts tweeted throughout the day
• Supporting organizations like the YWCA and Girl Guides of Canada directed people to our facts all day (and Girl Guides retweeted them all)
• Members of Parliament also drew attention to our 22 facts
• Retweeted facts reached more than 50,000 people
Online to Offline Action
Metrics
•Facebook: Sept. 22 alone – 382% more new fans than daily average
Facebook fan growth – September 20 – 27, 2011
Twitter: Sept. 21-23 saw:254% increase in followers4300% increase in retweets250% increase in mentions
Twitter follower growth – September 20 – 23, 2011
What’s Next?
And if we get the International Day of the Girl – it’s only the beginning of the story – a foundation for further advocacy to improve the lives of girls worldwide.
Final Thoughts
• Digital is an inexpensive and expedited channel to build awareness and support for campaign objectives. It also serves as a bridge from weak to strong ties, lower to higher engagement, and from awareness to fundraising and therefore, is an essential component of any digital strategy
Considerations
• Content curation and relevancy
• Offline engagement capacity
• Revenue and social media ROI
• Internal education / facilitating business objectives
• Advocacy is relative depending on organization and audience
Questions?