ChildFund NZ and FEDERATION launch campaign to confront Kiwis with shocking truth: Pacific children are dying from contaminated water
ChildFund New Zealand has launched two new confronting campaigns with FEDERATION titled ‘Deadly Weapon’ and ‘Her First Sip’. The new campaigns are designed to disrupt New Zealanders with the truth of what’s really happening in the Pacific Region.
Says ChildFund New Zealand CEO, Josie Pagani: “We make no apology for offending you. Children are dying from drinking contaminated water in our region of the Pacific, and this is entirely preventable. We agree that people should feel shocked and outraged.”
‘Deadly Weapon’ shows a young boy in the Pacific region pointing a water gun directly at the camera, bringing to life the terrible truth that contaminated water in the Pacific is a deadly threat to children.
‘Her First Sip’ shows a baby drinking from a bottle that could be poisoning her, a fear heartbreakingly familiar to mothers across parts of the Pacific region, because the moment their baby moves from breast to bottle is the most dangerous moment of their lives.
“The numbers are brutal,” says Pagani.
• 5 million people in the Pacific still lack access to clean drinking water
• In the Solomon Islands, 1 in 14 deaths of children under 5 is linked to diarrhoea
• Only 16% of schoolchildren have access to clean, safe water
• 30% of Solomon Islands children under 5 suffer stunting due to contaminated water
• In Kiribati, 1 in 10 children under 5 die from diarrhoea
Says Brad Collett, Chief Creative Officer at FEDERATION: “This is life-saving work. ChildFundNZ aren’t asking for sympathy, they’re asking for outrage and action. It’s why with these two campaigns, we chose to use creativity as a ‘weapon for good’. We didn’t want to be polite, we needed to show the truth which is horrifying. In New Zealand, we’re on autopilot when we fill our children’s drink bottles from the tap. But in parts of the Pacific, children miss school because they spend hours walking to collect clean water, or because they’ve become seriously ill from drinking contaminated water.
“No family should risk poisoning their child just to hydrate them. It’s why these two campaigns needed to disrupt and challenge the norms that New Zealanders take for granted.”
Says Pagani: “The challenges differ in every community, but they are solvable, and cost-effective. ChildFund is already acting. In the remote Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands, ChildFund NZ is working with local partner Greenergy to rebuild a water pump serving 3,000 people. In Kiribati, desalination units are being installed to turn seawater into drinking water. We can stop children dying now. Please donate at childfund.co.nz.
“Creativity has the privilege of creating compound interest for brands by creating maximum attention,” says Sharon Henderson, CEO, FEDERATION. “If we’re not using that attention to help save lives in New Zealand’s back yard of the wider Pacific region, then what are we doing? New Zealanders are generous, but you can’t fix what you don’t know. So we needed New Zealand to feel this problem, not scroll past it. This is creativity ROI² that fights for something real. Something urgent. Something human.”
Client: ChildFund NZ
Agency: Federation
Media: D3
Photographer: Michelle Hyslop
Production: Osmand Signs
Retoucher: Cameron Jones
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