Communications support of awareness campaign. Social Synergy NGO

TASK

Communications support of an awareness campaign to support raising children in families. It is about deinstitutionalization (reform of residential care institutions) and prevention of institutionalization of children with disabilities and/or with special educational needs (with the support of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine and the Social Protection Fund for the Disabled). As part of this project, we worked with the Social Synergy NGO. The communication support was supposed to result in 13 television stories and 13 articles in online media of Ukraine’s 13 regions. The implementation period was 3 months.

TASK PERFORMANCE

For this educational campaign, we produced visual illustrations about social services to be distributed to the mass media and used in social networks. In order to create articles and news, we required examples of stories of children with special needs who do not study in special institutions and receive social services. To find such stories, we contacted civil society organizations, experts, and social welfare offices in different regions. And directly through people or organizations, we contacted potential heroes of the publications. Next we recorded their stories and handed them on to the mass media: websites, newspapers, and television. We worked in two ways: either we prepared the texts ourselves and sent them to the editors for publication. Or we offered stories so that the journalists could further work on them independently.

It was not easy to find stories that would both meet the requirements of our project and be interesting for the media. Moreover, Ukraine was hit with another peak of COVID-19 at that time, meaning that people fell ill, the schools were closed for quarantine, media interviews and filming were postponed.

Therefore, sometimes it seemed to us that we would not be able to implement the project within 3 months. A separate nuance was that we had to inform the editors that the project should be mentioned in the material. And given that the placement was non-commercial, not everyone agreed to it. So sometimes we had to make additional materials.

After all, the plan was carried out, and 26 text and video materials were released in 13 regions. These were different formats — from articles to live broadcasts. And the client did not spend the budget on media coverage. All the topics and heroes’ stories were socially significant, so they were published and aired for free.

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Надія Кучеренко