Non-Profit Communication

WaterAid offered a new campaign about a common disease in our countries: Diarrhoea. The NGO chose to speak about it because it causes a high rate of infant mortality in poorest countries.

Who is more appropriate to speak about infant mortality than children? This group of children from primary school is fun; singing a song about diarrhoea, making noises, like any children in our countries. However, when the child from a southern village ends the song, he is not having fun or laughing. He seems more serious and less carefree. This effect is reinforced by the number of children dying of it every day, which adds a tragic dimension.

The advantage of choosing kids to sing and speak about it is a good way to avoid pathos, even if the off screen voice is kind of tragic. Nevertheless, the organization didn’t fall into the common use of dying children to encourage people to make donations. So the interesting point is this use of childish lightness to pass a message. It also reminds us that a simple annoyance like diarrhoea can have more disastrous implications in poorest countries. Meanwhile, they make the solution quite “simple”: dig toilets and we can easily help through donations.

The most interesting aspect for me in this campaign is that humour and simplicity are a good way to speak about delicate subjects. A thing that sometimes we forgot .

Tags: Fundraising, Health, nonprofit communication, WaterAid

This entry was posted on Mercredi, septembre 1st, 2010 at 0 h 24 min and is filed under campaigns, Fundraising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.