THE STORY SO FAR…

CRY Takes a Rights Turn

You’ve been around for years, everyone knows you, respects you, and even lauds you.

For nearly 30 years now, CRY has been working in India to change children’s lives for the better, forever.

CRY changed its name from ‘Child Relief and You’ to ‘Child Rights and You’ in 2006 to reflect their ideology that is concerned with getting children what is rightfully theirs as opposed to a benevolent act of charity.

This means that CRY will not work directly for children by running orphanages, building schools, supporting educational programs etc.

Collecting funds, CRY works with NGO’s by funding them, monitoring their programs and by helping them use their resources efficiently and effectively.

CRY’s approach demands accountability from the state. It will work to ensure that the state recognizes and fulfills all its duties towards the children of India, as enshrined in our constitution.

So, What’s the Problem

The key issue - audience was not aware of the process by which CRY achieves this agenda.

In the years preceding the change of name (from ‘Relief’ to ‘Rights’), CRY’s on-ground action, their local development partners and their communication, pointed to a ‘relief’ or a ‘charity’ function.

This has led to the audience perceiving CRY to be a charitable organization that works for the ‘welfare’ of children.

Developing the communication approach

Audience research data and interviews with key stakeholders of CRY, and the local development partners threw up certain perspectives on the audience expectations.

Hence, it was clear from the outset that the most important objective of the communication will be to achieve a switch in audience perception and behavior, by educating them about Child Rights and getting them to realize the need for permanent solutions rather than focusing on short-term interventions.

The Challenge

Synapse, an Information agency based out of Goa, was brought into the picture to advise CRY on tackling this challenge.

Very quickly, they realized that the biggest challenge lay in not following the conventional route, i.e, communication with pictures of sad, hungry underprivileged children seeking ‘help’ from the kind hearted donors/ volunteers/ supporters.

At CRY, the solution lay elsewhere. It lies in the fighting the real inequities on the ground. Governments over the years have bought in a slew of measures (e.g: mandatory Free and Equal education for children, employment schemes etc), however, the implementation of these schemes at the grass roots has been a stumbling block.

Hence the challenge lay in ‘seeing’ the obvious and fighting to correct the situation rather than inventing and maintaining a bottomless ‘charity bowl’.

The approach

The ‘Rights’ based approach used by CRY was perceived to be difficult to understand and seemingly complicated to the entire audience, who was always willing to give (time/money/skills), because they wanted to do good, but was now wondering what does this ‘rights’ based approach mean?

Hence the need was to explain the ‘Rights-approach’ in a manner that was understandable to most people and helped them become clearer about what CRY does and also insulates against any misperception. Give people the feeling that CRY has visible, real-world impact and their participation or donation will have tangible results.

Keeping in mind CRY’s inclusive nature of operations, Synapse proposed a communication platform to articulate that ‘CRY works with you to transform the lives of India’s underprivileged children’.

The ‘You’ encompasses all of CRY’s stakeholders – donors, volunteers, program partners, media, bureaucracy etc.

Addressing the challenges through communication

Synapse began by creating a set of communication directives that best manifest CRY’s brand personality.

The 3 most important directives laid out were:• Use sensible, sensitive tone that rings true with reason.• Leave behind a feeling of being inclusive. • Language should be simple, set in the ethos of popular Indian society.

The directives also outlined strict no –nos • No using social development jargon • No dramatic, exaggerated representation• No use of indigent children in close up unless in an identifiable real life context and unless relevant.

Next, information gaps were identified, such as ‘What is Child Rights?’ and ‘How does CRY fight for it?’ and specific tools were developed to address them.

The Communication Campaign

The peg for the central campaign to reposition CRY was based on two premises. • One was that in India emotion overrides content and so a way to an Indian’s head is through the heart. • Two was that India lives in its villages (And the villages are mostly where CRY works)

And so was born a simple, scalable, campaign able thought ‘Ek Din Aayega…aayega zaroor’.

This campaign thought encompasses lasting hope and optimism that is so central to Indians as well as to CRY’s work. More importantly, this campaign provided a peg that didn’t use guilt to prod the audience. Rather than present the grim, grave reality of ‘what is’, it represents ‘what it can be, with your help’.

It also gave CRY the opportunity to reflect its work, case studies and results to the audience with a great sense of unabashed pride.

The Communication Campaign

The next challenge was to find the media muscle to showcase it. CRY being an NGO, advertising and communication funds are perennially short and justifiably so, as each rupee spent on communication is a rupee lost for development.

It is here that CRY’s goodwill came handy as long-term CRY supporters and media houses sprung up to CRY’s aid by offering FOC media or at incredibly low costs. Infact, this intervention ensured that the campaign went twice the distance than it would have gone without the help.

The Communication Impact

From mid-Feb to mid-April • SMS – approx 100 responses • e-banners on yahoo.com & sify.com as well as on other partner sites generated approx 13000 click throughs to the CRY website. • Visibility across outdoor media in 4 cities (Mum, Blr, Del, Chn) – hoardings, panels at metro stations, cinema slides

The campaign is by no means over, it has been continuing post April 09 through our existing communication to the external audience as well as media support from time to time.

COMMUNICATION CAMPAIGN

A Time Will Come.swf

Viral video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOO29AdPLis

For more information: CRYSharmila SubramaniamSharmila.subramaniam@crymail.org

SynapseRavishankarravi@informationmatters.in

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Disclaimer: This case study is for informational purpose only and for any details contact sumita.mehta@crymail.org