Background:
The
small, west African country of Sierra Leone has been hit by civil wars over
blood diamonds, the Ebola crisis, and devastating natural disasters, all within
a couple decades of each other. This has left infrastructure and communities in
disrepair. But no one has been affected more by these events than the children
who live there. Schools all over the country were closed and access to an
education is extremely limited.
As a
result, children have to walk on up to 9 miles (14.5 km) daily just to get to
school—down dirt paths lined with deadly snakes, through monsoons, in
100-degree heat with little to no drinking water, past abandoned diamond mines
filled with malaria-ridden water, and down roads dominated by sexual predators.
And that's just one-way.
Our goal
was to change this fact by building more schools closer to children’s homes,
making education more accessible for all.
Creative Idea:
Most
people don’t know where Sierra Leone is, let alone the fact that education is not
readily available to the children who live there. We had to bring the reality
of what they experience on a daily basis while walking 9 miles to school to
life in a way that others could experience all over the world. And make them
care.
So, we
created 9MileScroll.com: A virtual journey to school that literally scrolls for
9 continuous miles (14.5 km) and gives users a first-person perspective on just
how far these children have to walk. The scroll itself takes users 3 to 5 hours
to complete, mirroring the 3 to five hours it takes children to complete their
walk to school. As the user embarks on their 9-mile scroll, from the village to
the school, they experience what the children go through day in and day out.
Keep in mind, children still have to walk home after school.
Strategy:
Our
strategy was simple: drive donations in order to raise enough money to build
another school closer to the children's homes. Because no child should have to
embark on this arduous journey just for an education.
But
first we had to figure out how to contextualize the fact that children walk up
to 9 miles to school in a way that would resonate with people all over the
world, from the comforts of their home computer or mobile phone.
Execution:
9MileScroll.com
is an interactive experience that scrolls for exactly 9 miles (14.5 km). As
people scroll, we give them an exact distance count that tells them how far
they’ve gone. Then, every time they stop scrolling, it tells them just how much
further they have to go, along with a call to action to donate so Shine On
Sierra Leone can continue to build more schools. The 9 miles scroll is broken
down into mile markers, each represents a different challenge or obstacle that
these children face on their epic journey to school. As people scroll, they are
served up facts and stories given to us by actual children who live in Sierra
Leone and who do this walk on a daily basis.
Results:
Over 1.5
million impressions around the #9milescroll movement
Thousands
of website visits in the first 24 hours.
Most
importantly, a new school was built closer to children’s homes as a result of
the campaign.