Water for Africa is a UK based charity which has developed a successful model over the last 12 years in providing communities in Africa with water, sanitation and health provisions. For the launch of their online campaign, which allows donations to fund the installation of boreholes via Facebook and its website, we have chosen the International Paris Marathon to illustrate the distance African women must walk every day to get clean water. The platform became “The Marathon Walker”.

We have asked Siabatou Sanneh, a 43 year old Gambian woman, to fly across the world to tell as many people as possible that access to clean water is a major problem for her family, her village and millions of others who live in Africa.

Alongside Siabatou, the idea was to symbolize the everyday marathon distances her and many others in Africa walk to access water. With a bucket full of water on her head, Siabatou walked part of the International Paris Marathon with a sign noting the shocking truth: “In Africa, women walk every day this distance for clean water. Help us shorten the distance www.themarathonwalker.fr”.

Our challenge was to inform about this situation in Africa and invite people to make donations to the cause directly online where donators can shorten the distance by funding sustainable water sources in Siabatou’s village and thereafter in villages all over Gambia. To address this, we capitalized on the strong storytelling around Siabatou to drive conversation on media and social media.

Our goal was to leverage Siabatou’s initiative to make as much noise as possible to alert public opinion around the water problem in Africa and maximize collection of funds through the online platform. Water for Africa has developed a new approach where donations raised will go towards the drilling and installation of water boreholes, as well as the necessary training to maintain the installation and required financing of repairs over the long term. Boreholes are more expensive to construct but the opportunities to support communities to grow with a borehole are far greater than a traditional open well.

In total, we generated 243 articles for a total amount of 4 million euros in terms of advertising equivalency in all type of media including TV (10% of the total), radios (2%), print (3%) and websites (85%). The total estimated audience was almost 1,9 million of people for print, more than 14,5 million unique visitors for websites, 12 million people for TV and 10.7 million people for radio.

Siabatou’s pictures illustrated 98% of the articles and 100% were very positive with 95% mentioning the online platform.

The results can be divided into two parts: first one around the Marathon and Siabatou’s initiative (90%) and the second one after Siabatou back to her village and the borehole construction (10%).

On social media, it was more than 20000 posts on FB, Twitter and Instagram.

So far, we are able to collect 30000 euros to finance 4 more boreholes in addition to Siabatou’s one.

Raise interest

On March 22nd for the World Water Day, we sent a media alert as a teaser with key figures about water problems and gave them an appointment on April 12th.

Announce the initiative

From March 22nd until April 12th, we did an under embargo pre brief with key media based on a press release and videos to illustrate difficult life conditions in Gambia.

Spread the news

A French TV channel (TF1) covered the departure. AFP media alert and our post event press release have been sent to reveal the initiative with pictures of the day.

Real time actions

We organized interviews with Siabatou to explain her initiative, the reason why and highlight the association and its online platform.

Reveal the end

We sent pictures and videos to illustrate Siabatou back in her village and set up interviews to maintain interest and raise funds for other villages in Gambia.

With zero media budget, we generated more than 240 articles in all type of media (French but also International ones) with 5 TV news broadcasts, 3 radio broadcasts, 14 print and 121 websites coverage for an advertising equivalency of 4 million euros and we reached more than 25 million people.

Between 40%-60% of water sources across Africa are failing. Millions have gone into installing water pumps across Africa but despite the investment, many communities are still living without access to clean water due to the lack of upkeep of these essential water sources. Water for Africa is set up to provide the necessary infrastructure and ongoing maintenance of sustainable water sources. Boreholes can be drilled to greater depths, more efficiently and more quickly, tapping into deeper ‘aquifers’, which avoid the challenges facing traditional ‘hand dug’ open wells, which are at risk of not consistently providing water during the dry months.

Our strategy was based on three strong beliefs:

• To embody this water challenge in Africa through strong storytelling which makes this problem real and concrete so everyone can understand

• To capitalize on an international event to create a sound board to give greater scope to the initiative

• To create strong online content which is able to drive earned conversation on social media

To raise awareness and maintain the momentum, we built an action plan from a teaser few weeks before until the reveal of the happy ending with the construction of the borehole in Siabatou’s village.

Targets: all French media (TV, radios, print, websites) and influencers through social media via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts.