Dana Haidan, Head of CSR at Vodafone Qatar.
During the campaign, the four influencers managed to collectively receive 100,850 votes, while 1.2 million accounts were reached on Twitter. The campaign Facebook and Instagram videos received 510K views and it reached 810K people on both of these social media platforms.
In the Giving Challenge this year, four social media influencers Asma al-Hamadi, Eid al-Sulaity, Abdulrahman al-Harmozi and Hassan al-Saei were selected to use their social media channels to encourage followers to vote for their chosen charities via My Vodafone App.
For every vote, Vodafone donated QR10 to the chosen one of the four charities, Qatar Charity (QC), Raf, Eid and Rota.
“The idea came from when we saw a lot of social media influencers doing charity work. We see a lot of people wanting to have a wider reach on social media,” Dana Haidan, the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Vodafone told Community in a chat recently.
“So we thought about ways where we can use their social media reach for a good cause and we wanted to inspire them by basically having them look up to the people they follow on their channels and make them think about how they can use this platform to do good,” she added.
The number of followers played a role in how the four influencers were chosen, but the main criteria, Haidan said, was social media influencers who are already engaged in charity work and their passion for it.
She said the response to the campaign was “just incredible.” It was double that of last year, where they received about 45,000 votes.
“Qatar Charity led the race with more than 43,000 votes and Asma al-Hamadi was their ambassador for a long time. When we invited her to participate in the Giving Challenge, she was really passionate to make sure that they win so she has really gone above and beyond to promote the work they do on her channels,” said Haidan.
The focus of last year’s campaign was on online child safety. They launched a programme two years ago called Amantech, which is an online child safety platform focusing on educating parents to ensure that their children are using the Internet safely.
It involved Vodafone working very closely with a number of partners who run workshops for parents, activations and engagement activities.
In an activity at Ezdan Mall, they created a game for parents to play along with their children. “Throughout the game they learn more about online child safety so we are focusing more on these types of activities, where we want to engage the parents in something interactive and educational. We want them to be able to do these things with their children,” said the Vodafone CSR Head.
This is going to be their focus for at least the next eight months, where they will be expanding the programme to involve more schools and malls.
“The other thing that we are focusing on is sustainability management. We have launched the first sustainability report, which examines our social and environmental performance and governance internally and it is [an on-going project],” said Haidan.
The second report will be launched in September for 2015-16.
Last year, Vodafone reached 10,000 parents through school workshops under its Amantech project. This year, the number is higher, as they have also engaged malls in addition to the schools.
“Every time we run activities, there is always hunger to know more. I think the parents find it a very puzzling world, as it is really fast moving. They see their children coming up suddenly with new opinions, behaviours and personalities because they learn from social media,” said the Vodafone CSR Head.
“So they feel they have lost control a little bit — so there is always hunger and demand for it. In future as well, online child safety would remain the number one priority for us because of the demand and the fact that not many public entities are looking into this area,” she added.