One of the great things about a bright idea is that someone comes along, innovates and makes it even better.
Last year Greater Manchester Police had the bright idea of tweeting all the calls they had in a 24 hour period for #gmp24.
At Walsall Council we picked up the ball and hooked up 18 Twitter accounts to tweet what an average local government day looked like for #walsall24.
The linked social approach went global with a 24 hour event that reached a potential audience of more than a million people.
Water Aid 24 was a worldwide operation realtime stories were posted from across the world moving from Australia to Nepal to Africa and South America.
It’s amazing the stories that were told. Here is a few:
- On the blog, Slus Simba, Papua New Guinea, on the Water Aid blog wrote about his pride in encouraging people to build life saving water toilets.
- In Nicaragua, Mishel, aged 15, has to collect water herself and walk home with it. We get to see a twitpic of her.
- In Mozambique, taps were installed at two primary schools while in Britain, the routine back office functions were tweeted.
- In Nepal, only 203 of 3,915 villages have been declared ‘open defecation free.’
- In Timor Leste, Jose ‘Rui’ de Oliveira Pires drives an hour by motorbike every day to remote villages to carry out work.
- In Liberia, it takes two days to travel 300 miles. Roads as well as water is needed.
It’s the bringing together of those stories that build a picture of work going on around the globe.
It brings the fact that people die from water borne disease right home to your smart phone. The subtle message is this: give us the means to act and we’ll do it for you.
But the YouTube clip recorded for Glastonbury that’s embedded above also helps deliver the message in a fun, accessible way.
There’s a few things I love about this:
It thinks big. It brings together a variety of voices to tell a louder story and it uses the real time approach that is uniquely powerful. There is a stronger connection made in real time by a message delivered with a picture.
But the campaign does not stay on Twitter. It’s on the Water Aid blog, YouTube on their website and is communicated through the traditional means through press release to the media. It’s brilliant stuff and shows how social media and traditional routes can work hand-in-hand.
You can also read the highlights of the event on storify here.
What a wonderful experiment and unexpected outcome. I used to work for a not-for-profit organisation of water professionals (closely associated w/ Water Aid), so I am aware of the huge global water issues there is still to tackle. We take it for granted here, but for so many people toilets and running water are still a luxury. This was pre-social media times. Imagine how much more we can unite people behind a cause by using the power of social media now. Thank you for an inspiring post!