Disability Campaigns

I've been Sighsavers social media lead for all campaigns for more than three years. During this time I have been responsible for an election campaign, a gender parity campaign and a reactive COVID-19 campaign. Most of the campaigns have been centred around disability rights and the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

The first campaign was called 'EqualUN' and was calling on the UN for gender equity within the committee. Representation is important! We were arguing that a UN committee especially one fighting inequality had to have gender parity to keep everyone accountable.

My role in this campaign was to develop strategies and create content to raise awareness amongst the public and target UN officials who were voting for candidates to join the committee. Another element of my role meant taking on extra channel management to support a female candidate and increase her profile’s impressions, my management lead to an increase of more than 600% and an increase in engagement rate from 0.5% to 1.4%.

I also travelled out to support the team at the UN in New York, I delivered live streams and took photos of senior UN staff, who were highly engaged with the content I produced.

From my work on the campaign, I have built a thorough understanding of disability inclusion and have played a major role in ensuring that our social media content is accessible. I’m trained in adding captions and voice-overs to video and alternative text in written work. In order to create this content and post it on behalf of Sightsavers, I have a full understanding of ethics and safeguarding, which is vital especially in the current media climate.

My recent work with the campaigns team makes me particularity proud. Working in collaboration with others, I created a ‘Hands up for an #EqualWorld’* action as part of planning for International Day for People with Disabilities. My idea inspired and increased user-generated content, where photos of raised hands with the campaign logo on were shared alongside messages of support for the campaign. People contributed from around the world creating a positive highly engaged moment. Part of this mini-campaign was reaching out to other disability-focused organisations and influencers to encourage sharing, demonstrating my knowledge of the social media landscape and understanding of how to plan, engage an audience and manage communities including influencers. Leading the social side of the #EqualWorld campaign presented many challenges in terms of prioritisation and cross-department teamwork, however overcoming these forged great results and I was delighted that the hashtag reached a huge 3.2 million potential impressions:. *https://twitter.com/i/events/1202936768900878337