Beautiful illustrations to fight against malaria

According to the World Health Organization, “the African Region accounts for 90% of malaria deaths worldwide”. To raise awareness against this disease and encourage the use of mosquito nets in Mozambique, the local organization Sociedade do Notícias launched in august 2012 an evocative campaign. The visuals illustrate a family being blown away by malaria. This is art and this is for a good cause:

Print 1: Mother

Unicef campaign you can’t not ‘like’

Unicef Sweden today launched this eye-catching campaign about the need for real money, not social capital, to fund their life-saving work. Already picking up steam on social networks. Although ironically I wonder whether the result will be a lot of shares, a lot of likes, and not much money.

After the jump, the video.

Help BBC and WaterAid ship a well to Africa

Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh of BBC TV’s Ground Force gardening show have teamed up to build a well and ship it to Africa for WaterAid.

Watch the video here:

Nobody can live with Swiss chocolate

Swiss chocolate is the best, say experts. And that opinion is about the final product.

The production of chocolate is a different story. The raw materials are harvested under bad conditions, like child labor and human rights violations.

Swiss chocolate companies and dealers are implicated in this, according to the Die Erklärung von Bern (The Berne Declaration). The organization started a campaign, in advance of Easter, to inform the Swiss public.

Companies such as Nestle, Lindt and Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods) neglect their social responsibilities, and still a third of the industry refuses to provide any information at all.

The main problem is the lack of traceability of the cocoa raw materials. It is the outcome of a recent study by the Berne Declaration.

More than 20 million people make a living from cocoa farming. This requires transparent and controlled supply chains and major investments in actions against child labor and price guarantees that allow cocoa farmers a decent living.

Harlem Shake done wrong

Using a hype for awareness can be smart. We saw that in the Parkinson’s Disease version of Harlem Shake.
The video below is another Harlem Shake version. It is from the French Red Cross trying to tell the horror of bad sanitation and contaminated water.
It looks quite forcibly. Like they had the video somewhere in their archive.

The video got 365.000 views on YouTube. A fair number. But how about the message? Did it create any awareness. I doubt it.
The info below the video at YouTube also contains a link to the French Cross website. And there is some information about the sanitation crisis on their website too, but the connection with the Harlem Shake video is hard to find.

Farmageddon: World’s first online drought hits Farmerama #WorldWaterDay

Everything was fine until the 22nd of March 2013, when the drought disaster hit more than 45 million online farmers around the world who opened their accounts on Farmerama.
The fields are dry, the grass is brown, the animals’ tongues are hanging out for lack of water, and every farm is a catastrophe. Everything that was carefully planted and long cultivated and cared for has fallen victim to the first online global drought. What now?

This is how Saatchi & Saatchi Frankfurt campaigns for World Water Day. They do it for UN Water and the Ending Hunger Movement of FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization).
It’s smart, the agency reach a big audience with this collaboration.

Online farmers are given the choice to carry on playing, or to help end the virtual drought by passing on the message or making a donation for low-cost pumps, water tanks, tubing and other supplies for poor farmers.

The campaign for World Water Day impacts not only online farmers, but a much wider audience as it can be shared on Facebook. Donors can also make a contribution on the dedicated microsite: www.farmageddon.eu.  All donations received are passed directly to FAO to finance practical help for farmers in developing countries.

Use your birthday for change #WorldWaterDay

Of course charity: water comes with a campaign on World Water Day. Access to clean water for everyone is their business.

“Today is World Water Day. Pledge your next birthday for clean water.”

There are still 800 million people in the world who don’t have access to clean drinking water, and in the new campaign the charity focus on the commonly used fundraising day in the year: your birthday.
Watch the video to see how 6-year-old Lory did it.

Check also the celebrity birthday profiles like the one from Depeche Mode.

Finally a good Infographic: World Water Day

I’m not a big fan of today’s infographic trend. 1 meter high visuals with meaningless graphics comes as a virus. With data which can be told in a few sentences.
Therefore I was pleasantly surprised by this infographic from Able Skills, a Construction Training firm. It’s made for Wolrd Water Day which is tomorrow Friday 22nd March.

You can see the static infographic after the break. Click on it and you will see why it is so great.
It is an infographic made for the internet. It’s interactive. You, the viewer, decide what to do and see.
Great work!

“The problem starts with water, but water affects everything. As a result, lack of clean water and sanitation is the 4th highest killer in the world
That means more people die from a lack of clean water and sanitation than from all forms of violence - including war.”

There is enough food for everyone #IF

It’s a simple equation. There is enough food in this world for everyone. And even a child can explain that it should be distributed fairly.
That is the idea behind the new campaign ‘Enough Food for Everyone IF’. It is the largest coalition of its kind in the UK since Make Poverty History in 2005.

Enough Food for Everyone IF is a coalition of 100 organisations and counting which have joined together to campaign for action by the G8 on the issue of global hunger.

Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu supports Enough Food for Everyone IF and said: “Hunger is not an incurable disease or an unavoidable tragedy. We can make sure no child goes to bed hungry.  We can stop mothers from starving themselves to feed their families. We can save lives. We can do all of this, IF we are prepared to do something about it. IF we challenge our leaders to take action. IF they listen to us. It’s time the world’s decision-makers came to the right decision on hunger.  It’s time to end the unnecessary suffering caused by the failure of the current food system. We can make hunger a thing of the past IF we act now.”

I hope that our current leaders will eat healthier food than what the kids do in this campaign video.

There are more victims of child labor than LinkedIn users

Data in social advertising is important. It puts causes in perspective. Did you know that there are more victims of child labor than LinkedIn users?
That children who work would be the fifth largest population in the world? Are the double of people who watch the Super Bowl? Are more than the inhabitants of Brazil? Are more people than Germany, England and France together?

These facts are the idea behind the new campaign from Advertisers Without Borders (AWB), the community of advertising & communication professionals who have a true passion for social causes.
Our ally Guillermo Caro did a great job with this campaign.

They based the campaign on LinkedIn, one of the largest professional networks on the Internet. This idea, created by Coupé Buenos Aires agency and IURL digital agency, was born when the found out that LinkedIn does not have a user age limit for creating a profile or generating the job search. Any child can register as a candidate/independent worker without being stopped. The campaign is not intended to damage LinkedIn’s image. This site was simply chosen for being one of the world’s most important professional networks.

AWB made profiles on LinkedIn to activate this campaign. More than 50 children and 10 companies working with minors were placed on the site. Immediately, all children were connected to hundreds of thousand users through a professional request sent from the site. The people contacted received the request that, symbolically speaking, invited them to accept the reality of child labor or to continue ignoring it.

Visit the campaign website here.