“Vaccination Is” Campaign
MHI worked with IDEO.org, a nonprofit design studio, to build vaccination campaigns in partnership with target communities. Our goal was to increase awareness of and confidence in COVID-19 vaccinations for refugee, immigrant, and migrant communities.
This means empowering community leaders to lead the creation and dissemination of their messaging campaigns. Leveraging their knowledge allows more rapid response and fewer iterations. Bringing the community into the process also creates buy-in and reduces isolation. With that in mind, IDEO.org worked directly with community members to co-create campaigns that were meaningful and effective.
Community leaders as equal partners
Vaccination Is was created using a community-led, hyperlocal communications strategy that was developed by and for members of narrowly defined local communities.
We heard from community collaborators a desire for a campaign that felt culturally-affirming in language, tone, colors, and images. In addition, community collaborators wanted to be able to quickly customize materials, adapting messages to the changing needs of their community.
The campaign included ready-to use materials for Afghan, Bhutanese, Congolese, Haitian, Iraqi, Latino, Somali, and Ukrainian communities.
Customized messaging
Unique communities need unique approaches to COVID-19 vaccine confidence that honor their priorities, values and the expertise of community leaders. The messages in this campaign are not universal – they are hyperlocal and customized to each community’s unique needs.
The slogan – Vaccination Is – acts as an invitation, getting us all to think about what vaccination might mean to our communities, and demonstrating that there isn’t one answer that’s all encompassing.
For some, vaccination is hope. For others, it is strength, and for others, it is a new life. It’s only through a rigorous community engagement process that you can know what will resonate.
Formats for each individual community
Some communities asked for fact sheets while others asked for decision-making tools, and others preferred videos. Rather than making one set of materials and translating it into different languages, we invested resources only in the formats that made sense for each community as determined by the community leaders. This saved us time and money while honoring the expertise of the people we were working with.
The Vaccination Is campaign included templates for stickers, posters, comics, and social media posts that are all customizable without the need for design software or expertise
Starting with community languages
In order to ensure the campaign materials were as linguistically relevant as possible, they were created in community leaders’ languages and only translated into English at the final step, so program managers in the field would have a reference point. This prioritized community perspectives and ensured nothing was lost in translation.
Capacity-building tools
Unlike our Get Vaccinated and Get the Facts campaigns, Vaccination Is was not translated into 40 languages because the messages are not universal. They are customized to each community’s needs.
With that in mind, we created Makespace, a website that guides users through the co-creation process. This allows any organization to follow the same process we did in order to create their own hyperlocal campaigns.
