Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : Paper Preeti Visits the World

Share a little about your organisation

Since 2000, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society has been improving the lives of girls in rural India. Its mission is to uplift and empower girls from the poorest sections of society by providing free education and vocational training and creating a new generation of self-reliant and educated girls who will break the cycle of poverty in the region.

Executive Summary

The Paper Preeti Project was begun as a way for students at Pardada Pardadi Girls Vocational School to learn about the world outside of their village in Uttar Pradesh India. 25 girls were selected to create Paper Preeti versions of themselves (small drawings of themsleves) – these versions were then sent to friends & supporters of Pardada Pardadi throughout the world.

Background

Inspired by the popular children’s book, Flat Stanely (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley#Synopsis), about a boy who wakes up flat as a pancake one morning and decides to use his flat shape to his advantage by easily traveling the world.

We are always looking for ways to learn about the world outside their village and to keep them engaged and excited about education.

Approach/ Strategy

• We began the project in April 2009 and it is ongoing. With an initial batch of 24 students, we have had tremendous response.
• When a person receives a Paper Preeti in the mail, they are instructed to take a photo of the girl somewhere and then upload the photo themsleves on our Flickr page. So far, we have received 47 photos.
• We will continue with this project as time permits

Stakeholders

• We reached out to our extensive network of friends and supporters through our website, newsletter, blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts to tell them about this initiative.
• We asked people interested in receiving the Paper Preeti to send us their address, and upon receiving, mailed them their unique Paper Preeti.

About the initiative

As a busy NGO, we designed our initiative to be easily executed but with big benefits. Once we had selected the 24 students to participate, we simply needed them to draw themselves. Secondly, we used all our marketing channels to tell the world about the project and ask for volunteers to receive the Paper Preeti.

Here is an example of how we used all our communication channels to advertise this initiative:
On our website: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/PaperPreeti.html

Our newsletter: http://www.education4change.org/Extra/May2009newsletter.html

Impact – Outcome

We measured our success in three ways:

1. By the excitement generated by the students to learn about different parts of the world through their Paper Preeti, and their increased passion for education.
2. Through the number of photos uploaded by recipients of Paper Preeti. The current number photos are 47.
3. Through general awareness for the work we are doing by the number of emails we have received in support.

Learnings

We learned that Paper Preeti was a very good educational tool, as well as a wonderful way to tell the world about the work we are doing in a corner of the world often ignored.

Our biggest challenge is keeping the momentum going for the receivers of the Paper Preeti. In our digital age, people are less accustomed to handling physical mail and tend to let their Paper Preeti sit on their desk for weeks.

What Next

We will be evaluating the program after one year (in April 2010) and discussing launching the next batch of Paper Preeti’s into the world.

Reasoning

• Not only is our initiative a wonderful tool for us to excite our students about education and learning about the outside world, but it turned into a fabulous tool to discuss the importance of attention for the girl child in rural India.
• You see, Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES) is based in the village of Anupshahar, in the Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, India. This area is one of India’ poorest. It is infamous for being crime-ridden. Moreover, it is one of the least-educated and least-literate sections of India.
• PPES was founded by Virender (Sam) Singh, a retired head of DuPont South Asia. Sam grew up in Anupshahar; although he left many years ago, he moved back in 1999 to use his success for the benefit of the people he left behind.
• Sam knew that to break the cycle of poverty, he had to first focus on improving the quality of life for the weakest members of this society: rural female children. Since they’re often neglected and uneducated, they’re forever dependent on male family members for their livelihood.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Factsheet

Name of the company: World Toilet Organization
Number of Employees: 1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Jenny Steeves
Website: http://worldtoilet.org/

1) Bell Bajao – How Breakthrough Rang the Bell via the Internet

2) Social Publishing Strategy at Pratham Books – Pratham Books

3) WWF -Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour

4) Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation – the Heart Kids Tweetathon – and How Twitter Helps Save Lives

As I was going through the case studies from IndiaSocial Case Challenge, I realized that there is no formula for social media strategy. The level of engagement and the apertures are decided by the nature of the product in consideration and the stakeholders. For instance, we received quite a few entries from the not-for-profit organizations and it is intriguing to see how each one of them has a very different approach and strategy despite falling under the same category. They have a very different set of stakeholders each, and the aperture used to engage them differs accordingly. It is imperative and critical to understand the need and the objective first. Here is a quick recap of the case studies submitted in the voices of the brands who shared them.

The first person in the following case studies has been retained.

Not-for-profit organisations:

Bell Bajao – How Breakthrough Rang the Bell via the Internet

The Bell Bajao blog focused on making a platform for user generated content. Bell Bajao is a campaign which centres around enabling women and speaking against domestic violence. The online activities hence carried on by the Bell Bajao team are interactive, responsive and attentive of what others are saying. The campaign does not merely use the online space to showcase its work but sees it as a place to share, connect learn and reach out. There was no such space in the Indian context where people could talk about domestic violence, where people could share and learn and reach out etc. We never used the site as a static information tool. It is a space to share, learn, communicate, collaborate and act.
We realized that the radio and TV ads were for a limited period of time, so we needed a space which could keep the campaign alive, so the interactive online space.

Stakeholders: Youth present on the internet, which are capable of bringing a change in their respective homes and neighborhood. We wanted to appeal to the youth by breaking out of the traditional image of an NGO and use latest cutting edge technology to spread the message.
On the website, we had a downloadable tool kit, which had information on how net users can become virtual rights advocate (an online version of our training program), hosted contests, polls etc.

Apertures used: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Social Publishing Strategy at Pratham Books – Pratham Books

Objective of the campaign is to “Democratize the joy of reading”
The reason to do this is because we cannot put a book in every child’s hand alone – we needed help to locate, distribute and co-create content.
We followed a very unstructured approach to our social media efforts. It really did begin as an internal experiment to document the work we do and highlight work that others do in the same space.

Stakeholders: When we began, stakeholders were all internal. Now that we have a community being built, we are always listening as to how we can improve. We hope, it has been received well and even enthusiastically.

Apertures used:

• Blog: A resource which talks about publishing, reading, literacy, kidlit, learning, non-profits, events and more.
• Twitter: A space where we can engage with the community, share ideas, ask for help, get feedback, listen to complaints, participate and mobilize people to help us with our vision of ‘a book in every child’s hand’.
• Scribd: Uploading our books frequently so that they can be read by more people. Also, for our Creative Commons licensed books to be remixed/repurposed by the community in whatever way they wish to.
• Facebook: Updating information from the blog and information about the events we do and communicating with the community.
• Flickr: Documentation of the work we do and also to upload our Creative Commons licensed illustrations so that they can be remixed/reused.
• YouTube: Documentation of our work and to inform people about some of the initiatives we are participating in. Also to inform people about our books through book trailers.

Initiative included –

• Skype reading sessions
• Inviting people to remix/repurpose our content
• More access to our books
• Audio books for the National Association of Blind
• Passing it on – the book edition

WWF -Getting India to switch off their lights for Earth Hour

Earth Hour is a global awareness programme by WWF to create awareness on climate change and fight global warming. People participating in the Earth Hour voluntarily choose to switch off their lights of their homes and offices for one hour to make their stand against climate change. For the first time in 2009, WWF India took the initiative to bring this campaign to India.

Stakeholders: General public who were online

Apertures used: An interactive and informative Earth Hour India site was created asking people to register themselves. Social media channels on Facebook Cause, Orkut Community, Twitter , YouTube, and Flickr photostream were created and these were used to engage with people and direct them to the site.

Within 18 days, the Earth Hour site got 1,23,704 visitors; 28,484 people registered on the website to participate in the Earth Hour event; the Earth Hour Facebook Cause got 19,059 members; the Orkut Community got 4,547 members; the Flickr photostream received 1,700 views; the Twitter channel got followed by 321 followers. Earth Hour 2009 was a huge success and the programme is on its way to another successful year in India now.

Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation – the Heart Kids Tweetathon – and How Twitter Helps Save Lives
In an innovative use of social networking site Twitter, Indian heart surgeon Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian does an annual event to raise awareness and funds for children born with congenital heart defects – by staying awake for 24 hours non-stop in a day-and-night Twitter marathon – the Heart Kids Tweet-a-thon.

Stakeholders: A large network of small business owners, entrepreneurs, social workers and generous, caring donors

Apertures used: Heart Kids Blogathon, 47 Hearts Group, You Tube videos, Twitter, Facebook

India Social Case Challenge – Edition 1

Category: Long-term Initiatives

Title : 8 days to change the world!

Share a little about your organisation

8-Day Academy gives wholesome, functional education to rural and urban communities. The education system has become an obsolete monstrosity and to revolutionise, it will take a lifetime. So, the 8DA targets specific interests, problems and learning gaps in communities and creates tailored 8DAs to tackle those. Tackling social problems is a lot easier and 100% literacy is a ‘realistic’ reality now.

Executive Summary

8-Day Academy is a focused initiative on dealing with problems in communities. Using social media has been a boon to this project which is slowly developing from a one-woman army to a global education initiative.

Background

I come from a conservative Muslim Marwadi family in Fatehpur Shekhavati in Rajasthan who has lived in Dubai all my life. But in 2008, I was working in a high-level job in Dubai government and I just felt what I was doing was meaningless. Sure, I had a great bank balance but if I chose myself over others, then I had no right to feel sad/disappointed when I would read how the poor were being exploited by religious fundamentalists. So, I decided it was time to make that change, I had to choose others because I was not ok with seeing so much misery around me and not doing anything about it.

Personal intervention is very important. Especially in Muslim communities, when they see me doing all the work that I do, many girls have been enrolled in schools because of me. That is something that monetary donations could have never achieved. So, I know it is important for me to be in these villages, than on some Swivel Chair.

Approach/ Strategy

I’ve worked with local schools in Fatehpur; the Computer education in those schools is very poor–they have it as a subject in Grade 9 and 10 and the only thing students learn is how to start/shut down the computer! So, I went to a local school who had some donated computers and none of the teachers knew how to use it, so they were covered and kept in a room. That led me to create 8DA of Computers. As I worked with the teachers, I realised their communication skills are very poor, so next time I taught them 8DA of Communication skills.

The idea is to identify problems/missing links in communities and teaching them those.

Stakeholders

It’s only a year-old initiative and being a one-woman army leading this, I’ve been dealing with myriad of things. With plans to scale it up, I am now getting corporate sponsors on board.

My stakeholders until now have been the support groups of 8DA, including the UAE Twitter Community.

About the initiative

The journey of 8DA began with tweeting. I tweeted from the field so people (on my list) were following me in my journey. This created an ‘automatic’ affection and belief in the project.

I have also involved the Twitter community in online brainstorming sessions–via tweets! The logo from the 8DA has been voted for (out of 8 other logos) by the community, who not just vote but provide feedback and insight too.

A fundraiser was organised as a tweet-up to raise funds for 8DA where we collected around INR1,50,000.

Impact – Outcome

I started off with teaching Computers to people who had never seen one before. In just 8 days, they were using Word, Paint, Internet and knew theory of Computing. In 3 months, these 17 people had taught Computers to a 100 people. Right now, this school has Computers as a subject from Grade 3 onwards!

After the 8DA of communication, more children are now volunteering to participate in school activities; there is a drastic change in confidence levels between both teachers and students.

After one of the 8DA where I taught Intro to Open-Source Programming, a 15-yr-old boy is now preparing a 8DA to teach Open-source programme to street children.

Learnings

• To keep the 8DA model as light and flexible to allow others to get involved
• Dealing with closed mindset in villages has been an obstacle
• Connecting with organisations across India to share their expertise and help to implement change and to create 8DAs

What Next

Next, I want to scale it up. Instead of five 8DAs in a year, I want to have five 8DAs in a week! And also, to move this out of Rajasthan to make it a global education movement.

Reasoning

I think NGOs and other not-profit initiatives heavily underestimate the power of social media. I think 8DA had a great benefit due to its approach to using social media. Most of the press coverage, funding help, services help (filming videos for TEDx Shekhavati etc) came from Twitter people. Also, having lived in Dubai all my life, I was not connected with people in India and Twitter provided a great platform to connect with people who I would, otherwise, have no opportunity to connect with.

Credits Strategy

Self

Credits Execution

Self

Testimonials

The real testimonials are from people whose lives have been impacted by the 8DA, such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U26fwIkuGTs

Factsheet

Name of the company: 8-Day Academy
Number of Employees: 1-10
Category: Not-for-profit institution
Case submitted by: Masarat Daud; Chief Actionista
Website: http://www.8dayacademy.org