How do we get women queuing around the block to join an SRG? That is the question we asked above (see entry 10). We have been trying to push SRGs. We need to create pull.
A starting point is to reflect on how we communicate, and to whom. Like many charities, WEvolution has geared its communication towards funders.
The website is for funders. The social media is for funders. Any woman looking to these sources to find out what a Self-reliant Group would come away slightly baffled. Unless she also happened to be a policy wonk!
What would happen if we communicated to prospective SRG members directly? This would mean using the verbs and the adjectives and the nouns that speak to the women. That might imply asking existing members to at least help, and if not do the whole campaign.
It would mean different kinds of stories. At present most charities tell stories with a familiar linear pattern. Michael was an alcoholic. Then he met WEvolution. Now he is going to Cambridge University (since going to a top university always seems to be the best final destination).
The real world isn’t like that, and the women who join or may join Self-reliant Groups know it. So we better use the stories that will speak to them. Like the model described in entry 12 the picture might be more messy, more up and down, not linear. Again, talking to women in the movement about their real lives, the world as it is not the world as we would like it to be could be a good starting point.
The goal here is contagion. Positive contagion. We want stories that people will tell again, or pass on via social media. “Did you see this?” “Did you see what this women -who looks and talks just like us” managed to do?”
We will come back to the contagion piece below.