Summary / objectives

Hope and Homes are working on a global level to eradicate institulionased care to ensure no child suffers the pain of growing up without love. By closing institutions and supporting children into loving homes they are working towards a day where orphanages have been eradicated for good.

It really isn’t an easy sell especially when people still volunteer in orphanages.

Hope and Homes for Children developed a campaign in 2017 which introduced the urgent need for support and political change to a global audience.

Background

An image of two brains. The left has grown up in a loving home, not necessarily a conventional home of 2.4 children with two parents, but a loving one. The right has grown up in conditions similar to those of an orphanage – institutionalised care with no love.

Eight million children grow up in orphanages across the world. It has been proved that growing up in an orphanage, without love, hugs, eye contact and being able to build relationships damages your brain development. The sheer size difference of these brains shows how significant it is. And potentially, the most harrowing fact is that 80 per cent of children in orphanages have at least one parent who is still alive but factors such as poverty, disabilities and discrimination are keeping them apart.

We’ve all been on a train or plane with a wailing baby, crying for his or her parents’ attention. You expect babies to cry, it’s part and parcel of growing up. However, in orphanages across the world there are no cries or tears. For those eight million children who live in orphanages their childhood is deadly silent. They used to cry but they’ve learnt that no one comes when they cry. They have internalised their pain, causing lifelong mental and physical damage. 

Special characteristics

Working with the team at YouTube, Hope and Homes developed an interactive ‘music locker' where anyone, from Sir Elton John to my mum, can add the song of their childhood and share their precious memories.  The site prompts you to share your own song. It then asks you for your personal reason for choosing that song. I chose Police’s ‘Every little thing she does is magic’ because whenever I hear it all I can picture is my mum doing the hoovering and getting me to pick my feet up!

The site then asks you if you would like to make a donation.

This for me is where it got really good. There are two suggested donation amounts, either the year the song was released or the length of song, which gives the donor an amount that is unique to them, that their song has dictated Another thing to point out is the DIFD banner that represents a UK-government commitment to match all donations, up until a certain date. Finally, I just wanted to point out the imagery that is used throughout the website – it’s  fantastic and powerful, showing the impact and not dwelling on sadness because the majority of images are incredibly uplifting. 

Results

The target was to raise £1.6 million and to date they have achieved £2.4 million, not including the DFID match, and the campaign is still going on.

A secondary target was to increase engagement. One statistic that puts it in to perspective is that Ed Sheeran uploaded his own video and shared it to his followers (or Sheerios as they’re known) and it has been viewed 1.4 million times. Hope and Homes top viewed video before this had under 1,000 views.                                                         

Nostalgia: who doesn’t love a ‘throwback Thursday’ or a ‘frowback Friday’. Email your song to your sister, ‘I still remember our dance routine to this song!’. They really tapped in to that the feeling and emotion. And it shows they got to know their audience. 

The teamwork from all teams at Hope and Homes really helped to make this campaign such a success. The grants team were able to source DFID funding, the communications team were able to secure great celebrity ambassadors and the corporate team were able to use it in their biggest partnership with Deutsche Bank to gain more support.

Finally, essence: Hope and Homes have been speaking about the silence in orphanages since 2000. It took them over 15 years to turn it into a  successful fundraising campaign, getting to the heart of what the organisation is about and striking a chord.

Other relevant information

This was presented at IWITOT London 2018 by Catherine Harris, corporate partnerships fundraising officer, Above & Beyond.  Catherine was one of the audition winners for I Want To Talk At That #IWTTAT and was mentored by Lucy Caldicott, Chief Executive of Uprising.