Results and Effectiveness

217 teacher & 385 volunteers applications were received -  roughly 4 times the target. MTV and Big FM, a popular radio station joined in too. Minister of State for HR, Shashi Tharoor also tweeted about the activity to millions of his followers.  Over 1,00,000 people shared on facebook and twitter. We received free media coverage worth USD 1,00,000. The activity was virtually free as everything used to conduct the activity - chairs, benches, blackboards and school buses were the property of Akanksha itself.   NGOs across the country and even in Pakistan are conducting the same activity in their respective cities. 

Creative Execution

For an NGO like Akanksha, mass media communication wasn't an option – but the more people they would reach out to, the better were their chances of getting volunteers. So as always the idea had to be buzz worthy to get Mumbai talking.  Places of transit, or where people hungout, seemed like a good way to reach the target without any media spends. Social media was also tapped into, to activate the initiative. Constant updates of the activity, as it happened, on facebook and twitter helped us reach out to thousands of people not present at the venues.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Akanksha, an NGO in Mumbai provides free education to underprivileged kids. They were facing a shortage of volunteers to teach, because most people feel they are not ‘qualified’ enough to teach these kids.  Our initiative was based on the insight that everyone has a teacher in them – which can be awoken by giving them a chance to experience teaching first-hand. The objective of the activity was to help Akanksha find volunteers. The target audience was the people of Mumbai - from college students to office executives to house wives – so an activity at crowded public places across the city made perfect sense as the people got to experience teaching the kids of Akanksha first-hand without going out of their way.