BrainReactions for United Nations Millenium Campaign

The topic areas we focused on centered around the UN MDG message, awareness building, and action strategies for young people:

 1.  MESSAGE:  What should the message of the Millenium Development Goals be?  What would you 
    call it or what slogans or images would you use to appeal to young people? 

 2.  AWARENESS:  What are ideas for how awareness of the Millenium Development Goals can be 
    drastically increased amongst young people?  What are some new ways of increasing awareness 
    for action?

 3.  ACTION:  What action can young people take to influence the government to be accountable to 
    share 0.7% of the GNP with the most developing nations to help with the MDGs?  How can we get 
    young people to take such action?

• Series of five brainstorms done in December with one additional online brainstorm
• Brainstorms done with 5 different groups of University of Wisconsin students and recent alumni
• Results will be delivered via a secure web-based interface
• Images will also be provided for promising ideas

This was a highly productive BrainReactions series of BrainReactions sessions that led to hundreds of ideas from brainstormers! We had a steady stream of hands up from idea generators waiting to share their ideas. The environment was a very positive one for creativity. Many themes did emerge as did many ideas that generated enthusiasm across the table. We strive to create an unconstrained environment that generates hundreds of ideas from the most creative college students. We use an innovation generation system to produce the idea results that we do. In the idea list you will notice that be begin with basic ideas and refine more and more specifically. As always, some will seem quite basic. Some of the ideas will seem wild and crazy. This is a part of our brainstorming methodology. However, instead of discarding these ideas, you can use them as stimulus to think about ways to fill the underlying need that inspired them and gain a greater understanding of what some of the most creative young adults think. A great opportunity exists to combine multiple different ideas produced into one larger concept. Many different ideas make up a larger better idea and there is creative potential in the combinations that can be produced.

The hundreds of individal ideas produced in this BrainReaction session became concept images, idea analysis in the form of themes, and a selection of featured ideas that was corroborated with individual brainstormer summary surveys after each session. These sections offer opportunity at glimpses of analysis and idea summary. The real opportunity for innovative action for the UN exists in the actual lists of hundreds of ideas produced in the BrainReaction Session portions. It is recommended that you actually review each idea to see, from your perspective and the perspectives of others, if there are some ideas that have promise to be reflected in your Millenium Development Goals Campaign. From the session a number of themes emerged that can become recommendations for implementation.

From the five sessions a number of themes emerged:

Get in the schools: Utilize the service learning trend to provide ready made service learning projects for instructors to utilize in the courses. Students can spread awareness of MDG and interact with government for credit and learning. Also, utilize existing and new student organizations to work on projects. Create internships based around increasing awareness and influencing government. Instead of asking volunteers to do a little bit, have students do a lot for credit. Utilize teachers and student organization & student government offices for this cause they would be excited to help with. Sometimes students need that structured responsibility through a course, org, or internship to take action.

Get on Facebook and MySpace: These are both social networking tools that have been taking campuses and high schools by storm. Opportunity exists not only to advertise, but to develop partnerships to get MDG links/logos on the sites. An MDG profile or groups can be established that people can view/join/befriend. These tools alone can drive awareness amongst young adults and students.

Customize the message/slogan to youth: Create a slogan or theme that youth can understand and get excited about. “Millennium Development Goals” is not current language (Millennium was language in 1999) or understandable. Brainstormers definitely thought 8 ways to change the world was much better and also created a host of other themes and messages.

Educate with Data: Brainstormers found the Truth campaign to be successful. In Public Service Announcements and marketing, let the data drive the message. 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day is powerful. Death #s are powerful. Education #s are powerful. Use simple pieces of data to motivate.

Celebrities: When Leonardo Di Caprio and Natalie Portman came to the Wisconsin campus to promote voting, not everyone saw them but everyone knew they were here and for what reason. Mobilize celebrities to visit campuses on behalf of MDG. Create a reality show where celebs live in a developing country. Have more celebs talking about the MDGs on TV.

Music: Music is integral to the culture of young people. With current technology creating and sharing music has become easier. Enable musicians and ordinary young people to create songs and music about the goals. Also, the Live8 concert was a tremendous awareness builder and similar to the UN MDGs. Look for a collaboration or the opportunity to offer your own major concert. I still remember Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp and FarmAid from my early youth.

Make it personal: Connect with programs that bring students to developing nations (PeaceCorps, Engineers without Borders, etc.) and utilize people who have been there to spread the message. Also, bring students from developing nations to the U.S. to share their story. On campuses have people from developing nations create a 3rd world village to show people what life is like on $1 per day.

Focus: Instead of doing a little bit of awareness building or government lobbying each day, focus on specific days where students are mobilized to spread the message through a variety of ways from conversations to events to internet marketing, etc. Also, government lobbying efforts should be focused on single days where large numbers call, fax, email, show up, etc. This stands out, is more likely to be remembered, and could be better for influence and awareness.

Corporations: Work with corporations so they believe this is important! Corporations have influence with both government and young people. Create a MDG brand or logo that could be used by corps that have many young customers. What if the MDG logo was on Big Mac wrappers, Pepsi bottles, Google, IPods, Nike shoe boxes, and video games. Why not try to form a partnership with companies who currently value or are looking to increase their social benefit? Why not mobilize passionate young people to do this, they are important consumers. This also sends a message to government.

Backdoor lobbying: Like influencing corporations to influence government, try influencing media organizations to start asking questions about MDG in debates, interviews, etc.

Awareness then action: The vast majority of our brainstormers did not know about the MDGs. They are the type of people that have influence over other students. Make sure you increase awareness first, especially amongst students with influence. People have to know before they can act.

BrainReactions Session 1

BrainReactions Session 2

BrainReactions Session 3

BrainReactions Session 4

BrainReactions Session 5

Online Brainstorms

Image Gallery of Concept Visualizations

The United Nations Millennium Campaign was established in 2002 by the Secretary General to convince governments to live up to their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a series of 8 targets agreed to by all governments in the world in the year 2000.

The Goals

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

• Deadline to achieve these 8 goals is 2015.
• Although the United States gives the highest amount of money to the developing world, it ranks close to the lowest on the list when it comes to percentage of earnings donated. The target is just 0.7%, whereas the U.S. gives only about 0.16%