Are you on topic? Suggest others! by Alina Iovcheva

How to warn a young girl, who is looking for a better life abroad, about the dangers of human trafficking? How to explain to Polish parents, that a lesbian teacher should not be reason to change their child’s school? How to tell a young girl in a disco that the consumption of immense amounts of alcohol can have unfortunate results? How to show the bosses of a large company that female employees deserve the same opportunities, prospects, and pay as male employee? How to break societal stereotypes about the Roma people? How to explain to a nightclub security guard that a guy in a wheelchair has the right to have fun as everyone else?

How do we convey to people what is important? How can you share with them what you know and what can help them build better and more positive relations? Which way do we go so as to be heard and understood correctly? 

All these questions are conceptually important in the protection of human rights, and I hope that our group of HIA Poland activists, with Marek Dorobisz's, Creative  Director of advertising agency Ars Thanea,  help, will find the answers in the near future. 

Today, our speaker Marek revealed to us a few secrets of building an effective social campaign. He spoke about what angles a matter must be approached from in order to achieve the desired result, and about how to formulate social messages to make them heard.

In my opinion, building a social campaign is an invaluable practical component of our program, which can help each of us to convey our ideas of human rights protection to a wide range of people. It's a great experience, which we'll take with us to our own countries and will use in our future activities.

 

I should note that I awaited the practical part of our program impatiently, and I'm sure I was not alone. Personally, I wanted to try to develop some strategy to promote a particular category of human rights in society. The theoretical component is very important certainly, since it’s something that enriches our knowledge and helps to orient us in a particular area. But practical work is something that can help us to become qualified specialists, and can add a very dynamic, interesting and useful component to our future activities. But it turned out that the work is not all so simple ... We were faced with some problems.  We have been split into international groups that are united by common interests in particular human rights field. Each group tried to create some new and extraordinary approaches to the problem of constructing a social campaign, to formulate the right message for society... but not everything was right. Step by step, Marek tried to show us the right way and give us key tips on how to effectively communicated what we want to our target audience. 

So, we learned our first lessons, we’re done with the first steps and now need to work out the kinks in our projects. Now each team will be working on designing a social campaign during next 2 weeks. I hope that each of us achieves high quality results, and that we will be able to give practical expression to our knowledge. 

Good luck to us, guys! I hope for interesting and fruitful work for us:)