After the selfies, the belfies, the shelfies, welcome to the Friday footsies for street child Africa charity and the rise of hashtags campaign. Let’s see in details how it works posting a photo of your feet and to share it with your friends on social media. Time for a pedicure!
The Story Behind
UK charity Street Child Africa is inviting members of the public to take a picture of their bare feet as part of its new campaign, Barefoot Friday. Launching on 20 June, the campaign aims to raise funds for the 100,000 children living and working on the streets in Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia and DR Congo.
By taking a picture of their bare feet and posting it on social media using the hashtag #footsie, the public can then donate £3 via text to the charity. Street Child Africa is also asking the public to ‘Foot-Nominate’ a friend or relative by tagging them in a post and encouraging them to do the same. The charity has enlisted support from celebrities to get involved in the Barefoot Friday campaign – including Former Premier league footballer and Sky Sports presenter John Salako.
Sheila Lutchanah, head of fundraising at Street Child Africa, commented: “The campaign is really simple and we wanted to put our message across in a modern, vibrant way which appeals to how people prefer to donate to charity these days now. Taking a tongue in cheek poke at the Selfie and inventing the #footsie is genius!”
The Campaign
The aim of the campaign reaches beyond shoes, of course. Street Child Africa (Twitter: @StreetChildAfri) has a more holistic approach to charity, treating each situation, each child delicately and individually. They earmark abuse, abject poverty and war as the key issues, with the money covering a spectrum of needs, from shoes to intervention (the charity’s workers are all trained social workers) and reuniting trafficked children with their families, a common issue, especially in Senegal and Ghana.
Hashtag activism is only reaching a limited demographic, of course, but that’s okay. “We’re trying to attract women in their mid-20s to mid-40s, who watch less terrestrial TV, do everything online and communicate heavily through social media,” Ms Lutchanah says.
It may not be raising sophisticated awareness of the causes behind campaigns, but it’s only aiming to capture short attention spans long enough to make a change.
Social Media
Like the viral “neknomination” phenomenon, participants are asked to “foot-nominate” their friends by also tagging them in the post.
Hashtags
#footsie #BareFootFriday
Get a pedicure or not, take a #footsie and post it on your favourite social media channel with the hashtag this Friday, have fun and don’t forget it’s for a good cause. I will post mine on Facebook and Twitter!
Featured Image: My own feet.
