Our Justice for Rohingya campaign has been led this year by our volunteer Campaign Champions. The campaign calls on the UK government to bring justice and accountability for Rohingya children.
The original idea was for Campaign Champions to lead campaigns in their local areas and build people power to influence their MPs. But then the coronavirus pandemic struck. Before we knew it, we were in a nationwide lockdown.
Initial enthusiasm was overtaken by uncertainty. How could we run a community-based campaign – that relies on building relationships with people face to face and garnering deep support for justice for Rohingya children – when we couldn’t even get together? Everything we’d planned was suddenly impossible to deliver in the way we’d anticipated.
We had no choice but to adapt.
So we decided to move everything online. For us, it was a new approach to community organising – and it was challenging. But we found a way through by training and supporting Campaign Champions to use digital tools and channels to deliver exciting and vibrant local campaigns.
Along the way, we learned four valuable lessons:
1 Online works
You can organise online. Whether maintaining a long-term mentoring relationship with a Campaign Champion or holding a one-off meeting, it’s possible to build and strengthen relationships with campaigners online. Thanks to the magic of video calls.
In the process, we learned how it’s possible to run a community-led campaign that’s almost entirely digital. On one level, it’s simple – do what you would have done face-to-face in the community but do it virtually.
Our Campaign Champions connected with people using video calling platforms, phone calls, texts, Facebook groups and Instagram. Events like talks and film screenings were all done over video. Using Zoom, we even had our first-ever virtual lobby day with MPs.
We’ve only just begun exploring the possibilities of running local campaigns online. But our experience was that it can definitely work. And not only that, it means you can reach people you’ve never reached before. Virtual meetings meant we were accessible to and inclusive of supporters in a way that we’d never been before.
2 Bring your supporters into your strategy
Part of our new strategy was to dial down – without entirely jettisoning – traditional community organising techniques, like building relationships with new people in their community. Instead, our focus was on supporting Campaign Champions to mobilise people they already held relationships with to write messages to stand in solidarity with Rohingya children.
It was critical that Campaign Champions still had a strong sense of agency in their work. Particularly given that we were expecting our champions to campaign in a way they weren’t familiar with.
We therefore created the space for us all to come together to work out our strategy. Coming together to re-strategise, enabled Campaign Champions to lead the campaign, gave them direction, and gave the campaign legitimacy.
3 Teamwork makes the dream work
While our Campaign Champions campaign on the same issue, they rarely campaign together. As a result, in the long and challenging process of organising people in their community and building support for a campaign, they can feel isolated.
But this year, it’s been different. Through meeting online and collectively designing a strategy, our Campaign Champions were able to work with each other in a way they hadn’t before. Supporters based all across the UK were able to campaign together with a clear, shared goal.
They even created a simple shared action: to produce a digital scrapbook to hold the messages of solidarity they collected.
A shared vision is key to success. And a shared action can lead to more action.
4 Be agile
In any kind of campaigning, you need to be reactive. But campaigning during a global pandemic tested how agile we really are.
And we learned an important lesson. Instead of spending two months considering how to move forward, we could have reacted faster. Rather than waiting to see if the external environment will change to suit our campaign strategy, we should have been quicker to change our strategy to suit the external environment.
As campaigners, we have the power to be creative and change direction. So if changes in the external environment mean your original strategy will no longer work, get rid of it. It’s OK to change your plan in the middle of a campaign. And if circumstances have changed, your plan definitely should too.
Would you like to be a Campaign Champion?
Amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus, we’ve only just begun our journey of developing digitally led local campaigns. But we’re ready to respond to whatever challenges appear. And we can’t wait to explore what’s possible.
Would you like to influence the UK government to give children around the world the chance of a better future?
