In 2018, several campaigns run by large coalitions of civic actors and civil society organisations took place at national level, in parallel to the #NoDayWithoutUs.
Below are some of them, which we wanted to wholeheartedly share with you. We hope that they will be an inspiration for your ongoing mobilisations.
Social Activism, it works - Poland
In reaction to the smear campaign, in the beginning of 2017, representatives of several dozen organisations decided to hold regular meetings to work out an action plan jointly. The goal was to strengthen the NGO sector and to defend it against similar attacks in the future.
From the beginning of 2018, our group has worked out the principles for a nationwide, long-term information and promotion campaign about the activities of civil society organisations in Poland. The goal of the campaign is
twofold:
- on the one hand, it targets the civic sector with an aim to build solidarity among organisations working in different thematic areas and different geographical regions and create a sense of unity among them, so that if some of them are attacked, smeared, compromised, others will stand by them and defend them;
- On the other hand, it targets the general public with an aim to raise the profile of CSOs, increase public trust and appreciation for their work, and, as a result, build the foundations for public support and resistance to anti-NGO propaganda/narrative.
Preparatory activities for the nationwide campaign started in May 2018. The preliminary budget for promotional activities was made up of contributions by over 20 CSOs representing different sectors, both large and smaller ones. All activities are managed by a coordinator delegated to this task by one of the partner organisations. In developing the communication strategy, the coalition seeks the support of PR and marketing consultants as well as a research company offering their help pro bono or at discount rates.
Find the full story about the campaign in the third issue of Activizenship (page 16 and 17)
#DeCeONG - Romania
The campaign was called #DeCeONG (#WhyNGOs, in translation) and consisted of 18 posts, out of which 15 were boosted. There were 3 types of posts: (1) informative posts, communicating on what NGOs are, what roles do they play, how many NGOs are in Romania and the number of NGOs in rural areas versus urban areas; (2) thematic posts, covering all major domains NGOs are most active in Romania and providing examples on what exactly NGOs do in those fields – education, animal protection, culture, sport, environment, health, minorities, women, children, elderly people; (3) call-to-action posts for the MEGA campaign – No Day Without Us, focused on the 10th of December, the international day of Human Rights.
#DeCeONG was welcomed by the Romanian nongovernmental sector and it was very successful in terms of delivery, reaching up to 186,562 people and having a success rate of 622%. It was a very useful experience for CSDF in terms of communicating about the nongovernmental sector towards the general public, mostly not very aware about NGOs, but also in terms of relating to other NGOs and mobilising them to get engaged in the campaign, share the posts, comment or reply to comments on the posts. At least 27 large organizations took up the campaign message and created individualized Facebook posts about their impact in the community, as well as a large number of individuals involved with the NGO sector.
Posts related to the campaign can be found in this album.
