Case Studies

CARE News

As the Manager of Content Strategy for the poverty-fighting nonprofit CARE, one of the world’s largest INGOs, I successfully designed and launched an integrated and scalable global content strategy to optimize engagement, grow CARE’s supporter network, and build local capacity for story gathering.

Over the course of a six-month pilot period in the East, Central and Southern Africa region, story-gathering resources were redirected to the communities being covered and a journalistic approach pushed stories beyond stock characters and settings and avoided reliance on CARE as a hero. The new story approach delivered 20% higher engagement and 60% more shares, and increased overall sharing by 20% on Facebook and Twitter. The content strategy also drove a 50% year-over-year increase in shares and video views for CARE’s core demographic.

A few of our most popular stories have included the story of a wedding dress shared among women at a Syrian refugee camp; breaking news coverage of Cyclone Idai devastating Mozambique and other countries in Southern Africa in March 2019; profiles of a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl who stood up to her family’s pressure to marry and an Ecuadorian woman who’s opened her home to more than 9,000 migrants; and an interview with a young Rwandan woman disrupting her country’s lit scene.

The cross-platform strategy is being adopted at CARE in additional regions, including West Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, and is critical to the success of CARE’s overall supporter engagement strategy.

#ThisIsNotWorking

In 2018, CARE International launched a multi-year global campaign advocating for international standards defining violence in the workplace. Our public-facing campaign highlighted stories from women around the world who’ve experience violence at work, from domestic workers in Colombia to factory workers in Cambodia. The campaign generated more than 100,000 petition signatures in support of an end to gender-based violence at work — a record number for CARE. In June 2019, the International Labor Organization adopted the global treaty to end violence and harassment a work, a year ahead of schedule.

Dream With Her

In December 2017, I helped lead strategy and execution of Dream With Her, an integrated campaign designed to inspire greater intimacy and empathy between donors and recipients. The cornerstone of the campaign was a two-week social media event in the field, during which a CARE team including me, two videographers/photographers and another writer, posted stories, photos, and videos daily on social media. It was an interactive experience, allowing those following on social media to participate in the trip.

Over two weeks in the field in the Kasungu region of Malawi, our team shot, edited and published 26 videos, including a live broadcast from a remote area. The stories generated nearly 5 million video views to make Dream With Her CARE’s most successful video campaign at the time.