The Campaign

Children are said to have the purest of hearts while phrases like good heart, big heart, kind-heart are commonly used to describe people who are sympathetic in nature. These phrases don’t treat the heart as a mere organ, but as something that makes a person more humane. We took this insight in the creation of our short film "I have a beautiful heart". Narrated by a child, our short film called out to all the kind-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka to form a long line of donors to build a Cardiac and Critical Care Complex at LRH, so that it will help to shorten the line of children who are eagerly waiting to receive medical treatment.

Creative Execution

To provoke the issue, we released our short film on television and approached social influencers to support our cause. LRH usually has a long queue of patients waiting in line to receive medical treatment. But the world hardly witnesses this grim reality because this list is hidden in books. Through our short film we brought this queue to life, literally depicting the suffering of the children who are in the wait. The queue, which extends far and beyond the hospital, depicts the hospital’s incapacity, prompting people to take action. After our short film became a red-hot topic in the country, Media channels voluntarily dedicated air-time to run the short-film. We placed press advertisements to further educate the public about means of donating. As corporate institutions steadily joined the line of donors, we placed our banners in their respective workplaces in order to reach a wider audience and create awareness.

Our campaign drew the attention of people from all walks of life including of Sri Lanka, generating LKR 150 million for project Little Hearts within a just 6 months. People across the country are now well aware of the project and are continuing to donate to reach LKR 2 billion.

This short film is relevant to this category because it generated an overwhelmingly positive response when it was aired on media and on the internet. Unlike other campaigns that consider the heart as a mere organ, our campaign took a more humane approach, literally bringing to life the plight of children who are compelled to wait for months, if not years, for treatment due to the limited capacity at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children. Our message was loud enough to be heard by the President of Sri Lanka who immediately prioritized our cause as national importance.

Our strategy was to break away from the cookie-cut charity campaigns and reach the audience with an insight-driven short film. We identified three key audiences who we can target this short film to: 1. Concerned citizens of Sri Lanka who wish to partake in charitable activities. 2. Media and social influencers who will share the film and stimulate online conversation. 3. The collective voices of the first two audiences were used to influence the third key audience- the Government of Sri Lanka, calling them to create a national dialogue regarding children suffering with congenital heart diseases.