Building unlikely alliances to save children's lives
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On Sunday (13/7/08) at 5am (BST) I’ll be on my bike on my way to BBC Bush House for the Weekend edition of The World Today on the BBC World Service. I’ll be discussing the Coca-Cola Campaign with a panel of people which includes a Professor of Econmic Development from Kenya who will be in the Nairobi studio.
You should be able to hear the programme live here at 5am GMT (6am BST). I’ll try and get a recording.
There has been a lot of activity going on behind the scenes recently in our efforts to get an international NGO to engage with the Coca-Cola Campaign. As I have indicated on the Facebook Group this is going to be a challenge.
The biggest leap forward came yesterday from an extremely helpful person in DfID who highlighted a WaterAid Report that was published on Monday (7/7/08) to coincide with the G8 Summit.
Above is a scan of page 6 of the report. As you can see, Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) are the highest cost intervention when it comes to extending children’s lives BUT hygiene and sanitation promotion are at the top. We have always said, and I have said it in all of the interviews I have given, that education and awareness raising are just as important in this campaign as anything else. Now we have the data to show that.
LESSONS LEARNT: We need to be far more careful in our approach to NGOs. The two-sentence description of what we are doing is not enough. We need to spell out that we are not just about distributing ORS, we are about raising awareness of hygiene and sanitation issues as well. And ORS through Coca-Cola crates is potentailly a very effective way of doing this.
In my interview with Eddie Mair, I said (and I paraphrase) “It’s not as if people in the remote parts of Africa are crying out for rehydration salts. Many would not know what they are or how to use them. But ORS salts arriving in Coca-Cola crates would generate questions. ‘That’s not Coke? What is it?’”.
For this reason we have said that the ORS needs to be _inside_ the crates and they need to carry messages. They should be the UK equivalent of the plastic toy in the cereal packet. In addition, Coca-Cola agreeing to do this in a particular locality, may just be the stimulus that the local institutions need to form the foundation of a local campaign.
Right. WaterAid. Here I come again . . .
I was very grateful to have been invited to contribute to the inspiring 2gether08 event last Thursday. I attended with two hats on.
In my current role as secondee to CLG, I’d gone there to check out my hunch that this is the sort of event and network that local and national Government needs to engage with if we are to make progress with the Government’s policy of community empowerment. My hunch was right and at the very, very last minute national Government did get involved with Tom Watson MP using the event to promote the ‘mash-up’ competion – Show Us a Better Way. Hopefully their involvement will be better planned and more strategic next year.
While I was there I also did a mini presentation and led a ‘next steps’ discussion with a group of people behind the Coca-Cola Campaign. More on this later.
At the event, during the coffee break, I got a surprise call from Jennifer Tracey (pictured!) who asked to meet to talk about what had happened since Radio 4′s iPM Programme first featured the campaign in May. You can listen to an edit of the interview below or by going to the feature on the iPM website. Thanks are due again to the whole of the iPM Team who really helped to get this campaign off to a flying start.
| Add IPM Radio4′s channel to your page |
Just a quick note to thank Paul Webster for nominating the Coca Cola Campaign for this year’s New Media Awards and for others who have dived in and left supporting comments (and the all important rating!). I will keep a role of honour below! Please comment and rate the nomination if you can.
This will help significantly in bringing more attention to the campaign.
Further information:
All of the Coca Cola campaign posts
My good friend David Wilcox just loves gathering stories on video. Take a look over here on socialreporter.com. We met up today for our regular top-up of “getting all excited about the possibilities Web 2.0 offers” and we got on to the Coca Cola campaign and David pointed a camera at me. This is the result . . . . sorry, I’m a bit nervous to begin with but I get into it!
Thanks David.
Further information
Can you sing or play the guitar? We need you now! Following the Cocal Cola feature on iPM yesterday the podcast was slightly delayed due to legal considerations. It’s now been released but without Eve Graham’s wonderful song!!
So what the people at iPM are suggesting is that we all have a go at singing it and send our renditions into the iPM Blog.
Here’s what you need to get started:
1 The Lyrics (these are slightly different from the ones on the iPM Blog but are what Eve actually sang)
I’d like to fix those Burmese homes;
Give poverty the shove
Grow sustainable trees, give aid with ease
And show Africa some love..Chorus:
I’d like to reach the world and bring
It perfect harmony.
I’d like to reach its outstretched arms
But I need a company:
Coca Cola we need them today
They’re the real thing
2 The chords:
D, E, A, G and D
3 The tune: sung to the tune of ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ by The New Seekers
This is how Eve Graham sang it:
Here is Coca Cola’s statement.
Go on! Get that guitar out!!
Download iPM_24_05_2008_song.mp3
Further information
Eddie Mair | Rupert Allman | George South
These guys have worked their socks off this week to support the Coca Cola campaign and the results came together beautifully at 5:30pm today on the iPM programme on Radio 4. In exchange for a simple idea and interview from me they have:
This is how the whole thing is reported on the iPM website:
We’d like to teach the world to sing . . .
Copyright problems mean that podcast listeners will have been denied the chance to hear our very first iPM song. It’s Eve Graham of the New Seekers, and she’s singing about this.
Not to neglect our digital listeners, may we suggest a home
performance of the anthem? By marrying the lyrics below with the chords
D, E, A, G and D, you can take part in our biggest crowd-sourcing
project yet. We’d like to teach the world to sing (but we can’t help on
the guitar unfortunately).
I’d like to fix those Burmese homes;
Give poverty the shove
Grow sustainable trees, give aid with ease
And show Africa some love..Chorus:
I’d like to reach the world and bring
It perfect harmony.
I’d like to reach its outstretched arms
But I need a company:
They’re the real thing
The world needs them today.
They’re the real thing
The world needs them today
(Coca-Cola)
Now, I just happened to have my recorder running while the show was on and by some fluke of ICT trickery the recording of the item, including the song has ended up here.
Here is the whole feature:
The original ColaLife feature on iPM | 24 05 2008 by colalife
Here is the song only:
Eve Graham sings a song for ColaLife on iPM | 25/5/08 by colalife
Further information
Many thanks to Rupert Allman of the BBC for his work contacting Coca Cola over the last few days.
This is just in via Rupert from Salvatore Gabola, Global Director Stakeholder Relations at Coca-Cola. I’ll be taking him up on his offer of a chat. We will get there a step at a time.
“This is an extraordinarily interesting discussion. And it is one
which goes to the heart of the key question of how we can make better
use of the successes of business to serve the development needs of the
world in general and of Africa in particular. The recent Millennium
Development Goal Call for Action by Prime Minister Gordon Brown stems
from this simple starting point.It is also something we take very seriously at Coca-Cola. We are
proud of what we are already doing through the Africa Foundation – for
example, providing safe drinking water to communities throughout the
continent. But we are also asking ourselves how our core business
operation can do more. And this includes whether we can use our
distribution network to deliver other goods which will help improve
lives in local communities.The challenge, of course, is to do this without undermining the
successful model which helps explain why you can get a Coke across
Africa. Because the very success of this network rests on the fact that
it is not owned by Coca-Cola but made up of many small independent
local distributors.Our bottlers do help these small firms get started with training and
start-up capital. But the system works so well because the better they
distribute our drinks, the more money they make. It taps into Africa’s
entrepreneurial spirit of and gives people the means and the incentive
to develop their business and create more jobs.So what we are considering is if, and how, this system can be tweaked
so it remains economically successful but can be extended so it does
more to help the common good.We don’t have the answers yet. As often happens, it is not as
straightforward as it looks at first glance. But I can promise we are
working hard to find solutions.This summer, we are beginning a research project and pilot in Tanzania
to analyse in depth our distribution model and examine how it can be
used to enhance its development potential. The Harvard Kennedy School
of Government and the International Finance Corporation are helping
with it.Our hope is that this research will come up with concrete measures we
can then apply to our distribution systems across the African continent
and beyond.Together I hope we can come up with the right solutions. And I am happy
to have a chat on this subject with Simon in the near future.”Salvatore Gabola, Global Director Stakeholder Relations, Coca-Cola.
I am really pleased. Thanks to everyone for signing up and posting resources to the Facebook Group this MUST keep growing if we are to make things happen so please keep spreading the word.
Further information
Today the Coca Cola facebook group has received a big boost in terms of content but I am a bit concerned that it is not growing as fast as it might. So PLEASE join if you haven’t done so already and invite your friends to do so as well.
In terms of content. Fully narrated photos have been uploaded by Nand Wadhwani of the Rehydration Project in India. Fantastic stuff.
Nand also emailed me and the email is reproduced here with permission.
My understanding is that the logo to the left was produced in 1985 to support a UNICEF report that Nand mentions.
Dear Simon,
Thanks for the link to the site. I’ve added information and links about the Campaign to my home page … http://rehydrate.org
fyi … UNICEF first proposed the idea of making the ORS sachets more
available in a poster in their State of the World’s Children report in
1985. Please see [ http://rehydrate.org/resources/selling_survival.htm ]. I’ve also updated that page with links to the Campaign pages.
I had spoken with Coca Cola in Atlanta, about 20 years ago, about
putting a small sticker on their bottles which stated that a portion of
their profits would go towards rehydrating a dehydrated child. With
Coca Cola being the largest ‘rehydrater’ in the world … with the
variety of Coke products, water, juices and other soft drinks … it
made perfect sense to me … great advertising and good will as well.
The proposal got lost in the maze of Coca Cola’s management.
With Facebook, a new awareness, and ….. I trust you will have more
success. I will also contact Coca Cola here in India and keep you
advised of their response.
Please let me know if I may be of further assistance in helping you get
your FIRST 1,000 members. You have built this …. they will come!
Good luck.
regards,
nand
Nand Wadhwani
Rehydration Project • Health Education To Villages
Further information
