Series of planning for transforming idea of creative campaign a reality

World Longest Toilet Queue, most awaited campaign is almost near to our door steps as 20-22 March 2010 is nearly after a month. EWP Nepal, FAN Nepal and WASH Chapter in Nepal is organizing the event jointly under the banner of consolidated campaign on Sanitation and Water for All in Nepal. There has been several rounds of informal discussions and interactions that led to this principle agreement of organizing the event jointly under the consolidated campaign banner. It has been agreed that all these networks will work together but also work independently in the areas where they have better hold without duplicating efforts but complimenting each other.

February 10 brought these members together in a platform to plan more vigorously for moving forward the campaign with more compliment but ensuring vigorous coverage. It was decided that there will be a big national event in Kathmandu on March 22, 2010 but there will be several events organized in rural parts of the country so that there will be events within all three days to show national commitment to the global campaigning. The WASH team member had already initiated process of orienting rural team members and spreading the message with the network members. EWP Nepal had communicated with other donor agencies, media as well government and political representatives. FAN Nepal had prepared a plan for orienting other rural partners and network members to have a wider coverage of the event. There has been preparation of some locally relevant reference documents as well as translated version of registration sheet that can be used in rural communities who cannot read English formats.

Discussion with the campaigners emerged creative ideas that could be made operational. The ideas of bringing together celebrities from different sections of life as movies, sports, human right and media were discussed. The country had recently witnessed a disastrous diarroheal outbreak in Jajarkot and its adjacent remote districts.The campaign should be taken as an event to share tribute to these 315 life lost and solidarity to 47,000 people who were negatively affected by this disaster. The concept of candle light vigil could be organized was the voice raised in the gathering. It was strongly opined that there should be a strong component of entertainment to gather the crowd and pass the sanitation message but with fun. Media should be a strong partner in the campaign, there should be series of write ups in the newspapers and online papers, there could be a mind captivating photo of children in queue to attract people's attention. Youth are the pillars of any development and they do play pivotal role in the campaign like this so there should be proper mobilization strategy for promoting young advocates in the sector.

The preliminary discussion in the planning meeting had showed varieties of the events that could be organized in the Nepal campaign. It was realized that there should be serious thinking, can we implement all these ideas? Are we being more ambitious and do we have resources to do all these creative ideas? There are several other questions in the mind of the campaigners that are still unanswered. May be we need another series of deep thought provoking planning event?