We developed the WELCOME TO CHECHNYA impact campaign with the input of activists and advocates working in Russia and elsewhere to bring an end to the anti-LGBTQ pogrom in Chechnya and to human rights abuses against LGBTQ people worldwide.
LGBTQ people are still at risk of harm in Chechnya — and around the world — but the film was successful in moving the needle in a number of ways: generating resources, access to decision makers, and platforms to share testimony for activists and survivors; amplifying the calls for accountability and justice from audience members, activists, and policy makers; creating greater political will for economic sanctions against the perpetrators; and motivating citizen activists to step up in the face of anti-LGBTQ policy and sentiment everywhere.
The work is by no means over. We hope that activists and others will continue to use WELCOME TO CHECHNYA to impact social and policy change — and that we have laid the groundwork for them to succeed.
Read the complete case study.
DARK MONEY, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and which The Nation named “the most valuable documentary” on its Progressive Honor Roll, examines one of the greatest present threats to American democracy: the influence of untraceable corporate money on our elections and elected officials.
The film takes viewers to Montana — a frontline in the fight to preserve fair elections nationwide — to follow an intrepid local journalist working to expose the real-life impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
In the process of developing DARK MONEY’s impact campaign strategy, it quickly became apparent that there was overwhelming public concern for the issue of money in politics that was matched with a correspondingly overwhelming sense of pessimism that anything could be done about it.
We recognized this as an opportunity to educate audiences about the wide range of policy and practice changes that could be undertaken and were, in fact, being actively pursued by an influential, relatively well-resourced, and bipartisan group of people and organizations, ranging from enforcement and safeguarding of existing disclosure laws to a Constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision.
Read the full case study.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Population and Reproductive Health program and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reproductive Health team hired us to undertake an analysis of the international population, reproductive health, and family planning communications landscape to gain a better understanding of how the field talks about their work and how these messages impact their ability to achieve their missions. We interviewed communications and program staff at leading foundations and NGOs in the field and conducted a traditional and social media audit. Our discovery process made it clear that, while there was interest in creating unified messaging, notable tensions existed between those who saw reproductive health primarily as a women’s rights issue and those who saw it as a driver in global poverty and global health. As a result, we recommended and developed a message platform that focused on shared objectives versus shared values.
The photo is by Possible Health and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
