The Children’s Society — Gemma’s World
Exploring poverty through the eyes of a child
To convey what life’s like for the 3.6m children living in poverty in the UK, we created an interactive child’s world and had 13 year-old Gemma describe it in her own words. Over 90% of people who took the campaign action shared it with friends — and it helped cause a government policy change.
As part of our ongoing work with The Children’s Society to campaign for free school meals for Britain’s poorest children we created “Gemma’s World”; a rich and interactive experience that visitors could explore and discover that, for children living in poverty, it’s the small things that make a huge difference.
The central character, Gemma, is based on real children the charity have helped. She explains what her life is like across a variety of illustrated scenes, from her home life, school and free time. At all times the Call to Action “Seen Enough?” offers supporters the opportunity to help change her life by signing the Free School Meals petition.
Gemma started conversations
We gave Gemma a voice in social media too. The content was ideal for splitting up into bite-sized chunks and updates and tweets written from a child’s point of view really stood out. Throughout the campaign, Gemma popped up sharing interesting points of view and compelling statistics about what life is like for Britain’s children living in poverty.
Gemma proved a PR hit!
Mumsnet featured Gemma’s World as their campaign of the week, with the discussion getting over 200 responses. Then Third Sector went and awarded Gemma digital campaign of the week. And finally, the Guardian featured our heroine in an article on how charities can use gamification! The campaign also helped boost the Fair and Square petition to over 50,000 signatures.
Free lunches for all!
But the best was yet to come. The Children’s Society’s campaign for free school meals — which Gemma’s World was a big part of — resulted in huge success. From September 2014, children in reception, year one, and year two will receive free school lunches — saving parents about £400 a year. Of course, there’s still much more to achieve — but this marked a great result for The Children’s Society.