In order to invite guerrillas to lay down their arms and come back home in Christmas time, we focused on the main motivation for them to demobilized in this nostalgic time of the year: their mothers. Based on ex guerrilla’s testimonies we noticed that a lot of them do not have had any contact with their mothers for over 20 years.

Thanks to this discovery, we looked for guerrilla´s mothers for about 6 months in order to convince them to be part of the campaign and personally motivate the demobilization of their sons. They provided pictures of their children before they joined the Guerrilla to invite them to come back home. Pictures where only they can recognize themselves. These photos were taken to the areas where the fighting is still going on with the following message: “Before being a guerrilla, you are my son. Come home this Christmas.”

The campaign achieved 218 mothers who received their sons again and impacts all Colombian who were motivated to forgiveness and support the guerrilla’s mothers. But the most important reason why this entry is appropriate to PR is because some of demobilized guerrillas not only claimed that they identified themselves on the photos but also recognized that the campaign message caught the attention of the whole FARC members encouraging the demobilization of the rest of guerrillas, including those who didn´t appear in the photos.

By using the childhood pictures of the guerrillas we did the demobilization message very powerful for three main reasons.

1. In the pictures only they can recognized themselves so they didn’t take any risk. We give the message directly to the guerrilla.

2. We remind them that their moms are still waiting for them despite the years.

3. The campaign impacts all Colombia achieving that the people were motivated to forgiveness and support the guerrilla’s mothers. The campaign also helped people to be realized that everyone has a mother who suffer and wait for her son in Christmas.

Many demobilized guerrillas recognized themselves in the photos and them who not, said that the direct messages touch them and motivate them to come back home with their mothers.

The Minister of Defense joined the campaign helping to paste photos and giving a message to support guerrilla’s mothers in order to invite their children to come back home with them.

And the most important result, 218 mothers welcomed their children home.