Guest Post by Stephanie McAuliffe: 15andcounting.org

 

International Planned Parenthood Federation has an office on an alley in the Bermondsey section of London. I stopped by there and heard a bit about their 15andcounting campaign. It was great talking social media strategy and potential with Matthew Lindley, Development, Nuzhat Jabinh, Web Officer, Paul Bell, Senior Communications Officer and Chris Wells, Creative Design Officer. (You can follow on Twitter – @djwesto and @t­_box, and of course @15andcounting) We exchanged resources and opinions at a furious and fun pace.

 

At one point Matthew said “You can’t make partnerships if someone has to buy into your brand”. This comment struck me as well aligned with some made by Vikki Spruill from the Ocean Conservancy. She got me started thinking along this line at a networks meeting where she was encouraging the branding of issues, instead of specific organizations.

15andCounting is a campaign to demand better access to sexual health services and education for everyone, regardless of your age, gender or where you live. The 15 refers to both the fiscal promises made by governments in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the age of the young people who need these services, who were born that year. The site includes a petition and a resource kits with tools, like stakeholders letters, so people can launch campaigns in their country. The site is in English, Español , Français and Arabic. Its fun to look at the petition and see people signed up from Djibouti to Brazil There is a cell phone component to the campaign that has caused it to really take off in South Africa. Check it out, http://www.15andcounting.org/.

 

 

 

Stephanie McAuliffe is the Director of Human Resources at the Packard Foundation.  This post was originally published on Stephanie's personal blog, Starting Out

Comments

[Bruce Trachtenberg]

Branding of issues...tell me more???

[stephanie mcauliffe]

Hi Bruce thanks for commenting. Another example came up today. The organizations that fight illiteracy in one of our local counties formed a network. They have decided as a group that they want to develop shared marketing materials about the issue. I wonder, have we been too corporate when we encourage branding of nonprofit organizations?