I stumbled across a fascinating and inspiring campaign by Amnesty International Ireland that I wanted to highlight here on the blog. It is an excellent example of user generated content being used for the power of good and to effect actual change.  Over a 4 week period (ending 8th May) Amnesty will be collecting videos submitted by the public from all over the country, as part of their mental health campaign. The videos collected, part of their Demanding Change campaign, will then be edited into the main film  which will be presented to Brian Cowen in a bid to make mental health a political priority.

What Amnesty say

I spoke to Pippa Woolnough, Communications Officer (Mental Health) at Amnesty International Ireland, to see what made them want to do the campaign, which is being run in partnership with production company Tengger. Impressively, as Amnesty is running the campaign on a tight budget, the entire process is being managed inhouse. Pippa explained that this is the first time they’ve run a campaign like this and they wanted to explore the possibility of using new media to affect and change their usual lobbying process. As much as this campaign is about mental health, there is a bigger picture here. Pippa is hopeful that the campaign will affect Amnesty’s more traditional approach to  mental health and human rights campaigns in general.

What I like about this campaign is that it uses social media to strongly carry through the messages and approach that is at the heart of Amnesty International. This quote from Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty Ireland, puts this into perspective “Since its foundation nearly 50 years ago, Amnesty International owes much of its success to individual people who have stood up for universally recognised human rights. We have more than 2.2 million members and supporters internationally, with more than 15,000 of those based in Ireland.” The fact that Amnesty are supporting giving a voice to these individuals through social media is commendable.

The campaign is also being supported through their Facebook page , which is the largest of Irish NGO’s and an inspiration to any charity or voluntary organisations in Ireland :

Get Involved

So far Amnesty have received around 20 video submissions and they need more! To submit your video, you can email it in to info@tengger.ie , or find out more about how to get involved here. (links to pdf). Remember that to submit a video you don’t need any fancy technology, just a powerful voice and a mobile phone. The submission process itself is a little clunky, having to paste a consent form into your email and without the ability to publicly see submitted entries, but I think this is reflective of the fact that this is being run on a small budget. No fancy Facebook apps here, just a great idea, and an inspiring one at that.

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