The Campaign

The Noon Assembly utilizes an age-old custom and repurposes it to improve the Vitamin D status of children in India. It shifts the time of the traditional morning assembly in schools to around noon and provides students better sunlight exposure, at a time most suited for Vitamin D production in their bodies. With nearly 90% of children suffering from Vitamin D Deficiency (VDD), it is practically a zero-cost solution to such a huge public health problem in India.

Execution

The initiative kicked off with a joint meeting between various governmental and non-governmental stakeholders on ‘Strategies to combat Vitamin D Deficiency in Children’ at the FSSAI headquarters on March 05, 2018. With the involvement of these stakeholders, the initiative was launched with a joint Noon Assembly on April 09, 2018 at the National Bal Bhavan, New Delhi. More than 600 students from around 25 schools participated in the launch event. We reached out to children, parents, schools, and medical professionals through print ads in national dailies, noonassembly.in website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram handles of FSSAI, and noonassembly, school events, and clinic visits. In less than a month since launch, local and national print, TV, and online media covered the initiative with nearly 200 stories and helped the Noon Assembly reach more than 50 schools in the country.

So far, 34,000+ parents and 52+ Schools have supported it giving 50,000+ school students, 200,00,000+ ‘sun minutes.’ 750+ doctors were communicated the benefits of Noon Assembly with HCP communication toolkit. Almost everyone recommended it. The campaign got nationwide coverage with around $2 Million+ in earned media. Kwality got positive reinforcement with the thousands of students and parents it reached through school programs. With more than 175 stories covering the Noon Assembly in national and local dailies, within one month of launch the campaign reached around 7 million readers, along with digital coverage and prime time coverage in 9 TV channels. The campaign is reaching out to 2000+ schools with FSSAI’s Food Fortification Resource Centre (FFRC). CBSE is considering to propose Noon Assembly as mandatory to all the 20000+ schools under its affiliation. NCERT is considering to make Vitamin D deficiency and its solution a part of the national curriculum.

The Situation

With nearly 90% of children suffering from it, the deficiency of Vitamin D should be a cause of major concern in India. Yet, most of the people are either ignorant of it or do not take it seriously enough. Childhood is the right age to form good bone health for the rest of the life, therefore it was imperative that all the stakeholders knew and acted upon increasing Vitamin D levels in the children. PR played a critical role in helping Noon Assembly’s message reach to the target audience across the country.

The Strategy

Noon Assembly’s message needed to reach out to parents, children, medical professionals, and policymakers. We reached out to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, to help lead the initiative. With FSSAI on-board, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD); educational boards Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT); school bodies New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), Municipal Corporation of North Delhi (North MCD); private schools; and NGOs Save The Children, Child Survival India, SEHEAC, GAIN, also joined. We decided to be both national and local in our approach. National publications and electronic media helped us reach wide to a majority of our target audience. On the other hand, local events in schools and clinic visits helped gain support at the ground level.