Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

Recently a client insisted that we include “the cost of not taking action” in a set of messages that we were developing for him.  Originally I balked because I am convinced that talking about solutions is what motivates people to act on behalf of a cause. 

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for nonprofit communicators, I like to tell participants in our training sessions, is that we often live too much in the problem.  In fact, we embrace the problem.  We get advanced degrees in the problem.  We learn so much about the problem that it’s all we talk about, which surely seems counterproductive.

And yet…yesterday I read an item on the BBC site that discussed a type of polio in Nigeria that is associated with immunizations.  It seems that a 2003 vaccine campaign was abruptly halted by Islamic leaders who believed it was a Western attempt to sterilize Muslim women.  Thus, only a small percentage of children were immunized.  The virus mutated in the vaccinated kids, who then passed on the mutation to children who never received the vaccine in the first place.  About 70 of those unvaccinated children came down with polio, reinforcing existing skepticism of Western medicine. 

The outbreak is slowing now and polio cases as a whole are down from last year.  The reason?  A new immunization program has been reaching more children because health workers are taking polio victims with them to clinics, demonstrating to parents the risks of not having their children vaccinated. 

--BONNIE