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SOS Children’s Villages USA gets creative for donations
When the financial crisis has hit the economy worldwide, along with the dwindle in share prices, charity organizations have seen a substantial drop in the number and in the amount of the donations they receive. Some have said these were difficult times and said they would have to face an even more difficult situation from now on.
Others, like the US branch of SOS Villages, a charity that runs villages for orphaned and abandoned children in the United States and 169 other countries worldwide (the world’s largest orphan charity), got creative.
Back in the early days of this September, SOS Villages launched a video contest to see, who could produce the best video advertisement for their cause. They have set up a YouTube channel for the contest, offered a few prices, and asked video artists to build short clips around SOS Children’s Villages’ message.
They also asked readers, and the viewers of the videos to use the blessings of the social networking sites to spread the word: “Forward this video page to a friend or embed a video on your web site, your Facebook page, your MySpace page or wherever you post information about causes you believe in,” they wrote on their YouTube page.
The contest - and the videos - got viral, and the impact of the campaign proved to be amazing. Traffic on their Web site tripled and donations doubled in just a couple of weeks. SOS even increased the number of subscribers to its electronic newsletter by 10 percent. Out of the eighteen submitted two-minute clips, the winner was chosen by the visitors of the channel. The award went to Dr. Ernest Brown from Washington, D.C. - aka DoctorEBrown, a physician working for Unity Health Care who makes house calls for under-served patients in the southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C.
Furthermore, according to SOS Children’s Villages blog, he usually takes part in medical missions to other countries as well. He recently participated in medical missions in Belize and Cuba and has upcoming missions scheduled for Tanzania and Senegal where he hopes to provide medical services to children at nearby SOS Villages.
His video (shown above) features his own, six-year-old son, who talks about the importance of his parents, and asks for the help of the viewers. The part, when he stumbles saying the word “contribute” is both funny and moving. DoctorEBrown’s video has been viewed (to date) 2,820 times on YouTube.
According to SOS Children’s Villages, every 2.2 seconds, a child loses a parent due to war, natural disaster, poverty, disease and other causes. Today, there are 133 million children who have lost one or both of their parents, and 15 million are orphaned due to AIDS. SOS Children’s Villages is the world’s largest non-governmental organization dedicated to help these children.
The video contest organized by SOS Children’s Villages USA was an integral part of World Orphan Week, an annual fund-raising initial of the NGO. Wow was also supported by a whole bunch of celebrities, including ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ actress Georgie Henley; TV presenters Phil Spencer, George Alagiah and Louise Minchin; fashion icon Vivienne Westwood and rising star Jordan Parkinson.
The next World Orphan Week is to take place between 9-15 February, 2009. You can register for your free fundraising package here.
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Yep - I would agree with that.. Thanks for the line.