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The media challenge
The Institute for the Development of Communities was founded in 2000 and works with rural communities across the country. They are about to complete their one hundredth project and are looking for ways to promote their organization’s work and its mission. They now have a proven track record in their work and believe that they could get more communities involved if they could properly publicize the achievements of the communities with which they have worked. The Institute supports local initiatives for improving the standard of living in rural communities, by developing the capacity of residents to organize themselves, identify financial support and then implement the necessary changes. Their projects are equally divided among those that increase the conditions of or access to education facilities and those that improve conditions for income generation and employment.
The response to the challenge
Objective
The Institute’s goal is to inform people about their work so that and to popularize the model they use for working with communities.
Target
The target audience for the Institute’s media campaign consists of rural populations across the country, which means they are trying to reach people from various ethnic groups and religions.
Message
Communities can succeed at improving their own conditions and prospects and the Institute for the Development of Communities can help them do it.
Tools
The Institute for the Development of Communities has a reasonably good budget for their media campaign, which is important since the nature of their target group means they have to engage national level media outlets.
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Press Tour: |
The Institute decided to use the occasion of the one
hundredth
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project to organize a field visit to the village in which the project is being implemented. They invited a select group of approximately 20 journalists from national media outlets and organized transportation from the capitol
city. The tour began with a visit to the now rehabilitated school, during which the journalists were given a chance to talk to some of the children who attend the school and to see a display of photographs of what the school looked like before. A village meeting followed the visit to the school, during which key members of the community explained the process through which they organized the school improvement project and found support for their work through the Institute. At the end of the tour the journalists received media kits that included a description of the Institute’s goals and community engagement process, a list of all of their projects, photographs of the work being done on the school and the finished project, as well as two short stories about the impact of two other successful projects.
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Press Release: |
Since it was not possible to invite more than 20 journalists
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the tour, the Institute also sent out a press release announcing the completion of the one hundredth project and which briefly described the Institute’s process for engaging communities. The press release gave information about the program to those who did not take part in the press tour.
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Press Briefings: |
Using the contacts made through the press tour the Institute
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| began to organize regular press briefings every month. They invite the journalists that have been covering their work and/or participated in the press tour. The press briefings are called Community Development Breakfasts and are held on Thursdays at 10:00 with coffee and pastries. At each briefing a different project is featured and the Institute brings in one or two key members of the community involved in the project. At each briefing, the spokesperson for the Institute goes over the process and the ways that other communities can get involved. The journalists that have been following the story also use these briefings to point out potential communities for the Institute to engage. |
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Analysis of the response
What was their challenge?
There are two main challenges in this case. The first is making sure that the journalists and thereby the audiences, truly understand the process that the Institute uses and the way in which they work. Since this campaign is about promoting a model and getting more communities interested in it, the model must be properly represented, to avoid speculation or unrealistic expectations. The second challenge is to get journalists from national level media outlets interested in stories from the rural parts of the country. Journalists in the big cities have little contact with rural areas, and also have little time or resources to travel to those parts of the country. They had to bring the journalists out there and bring the people from the rural communities into the city to meet with the journalists.
What did they do right?
In both the press tour and the regular briefings the Institute attempted to give journalists as much direct contact as possible with the beneficiaries and partners in their project. This is always much more effective than having representatives from the organization explain why an activity or project is successful. The media generally want to hear the human interest stories from the communities impacted directly. It was also a useful tactic to maintain contacts with a consistent group of journalists. These journalists will be the ones who truly understand the process that they use and why it is important for communities. They can become additional advocates of the program.
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If you were the media coordinator for the Institute for the Development of Communities what other events or press outreach would you organize? |
What else could they have done?
In addition to the somewhat informal briefings, they could have organized some more official interviews on talk shows or contact programs. The spokesperson and director of the Institute would have both made good interview subjects as well as perhaps some key members of communities in which they have worked successfully. Their tactics were focused almost exclusively on national media, but it would also be useful to visit local television and radio stations across the country to give interviews about the program.
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