Three simple words — Make Poverty History — have spread through the popular consciousness of the world since the international campaign was kicked off in 2005, by Bono and others, with the hugely successful Live8 Concerts. A global coalition of individuals and organizations determined to end poverty, both in the developing world and at home, MPH is a next-generation, people-driven campaign, and has built a massive global movement towards change. In their own simple words, they seek: “more and better aid, trade justice, cancel the debt, and end child poverty in Canada.”
The original Canadian makepovertyhistory.ca site was launched quickly, born of the need for a site to inform people and gather signatures in the lead-up to the original concerts. And gather signatures they did — 250,000 of them, making them one of the top mailing lists in Canada. But MPH was eager to harness more energy from their constituents, and soon there was a need for web tools that would effectively engage all of those willing people beyond their initial signatures. Communicopia was hired to take MPH to the next level.
We first worked closely with the senior campaigners to hone the vision of what this campaign could become, two years after their initial peak. What does MPH stand for in 2008? How will we engage people meaningfully in our work? What might these hundreds of thousands of people be willing to do, if we tap into their passion and empower them? Out of the online vision process emerged a new set of priorities and tools, a new way of telling the story, and a whole new way of thinking about engagement.
In technical terms, their new web site is a high-powered “campaign 2.0” site, built using the popular community management system Drupal. New blog-style updates allow MPH to show momentum by posting much more frequent updates about successes and actions, and social networking functionality enables supporters to organize events and meet-ups locally, post photos of their efforts, and easily spread the word to their networks: turning them into campaigners themselves. “The new site will greatly amplify the success stories that make it back to supporters, encouraging everyone to step up and do more,” explains Eric Squair, online campaign coordinator for MPH. “The story of this site will be a whole lot of activity by Canadians committed to making poverty history, participating in local activities, and getting others to join them. It’s an unstoppable force.”
Equally importantly, Eric is excited about the changes the new site will create internally at the campaign. “It’s much easier to disseminate ‘web thinking’ through an organization with a powerful website like this. People start thinking about how to be more transparent, open and nimble. People start putting online engagement at the centre, rather than adding it as an afterthought. It’s a move away from the habit of handing off stuff to the “web master” to deal with — because everyone owns the web presence. A website like this can start a culture shift.”