Farewell from Education For Choice

By Education For Choice | 30 April 2010, 17:30

I’ve lobbied my MP, I’ve waved placards, I’ve donated money. I’ve argued with my friends, my colleagues, with strangers. I’ve shouted into a megaphone. On one memorable occasion I carried a flaming torch around Bloomsbury. I’ll go a long way to defend the principle of a woman’s right to choose. But until I joined the trustee board of Education For Choice I confess I hadn’t given enough thought to exactly who was making the choice, and what the reality of their situation might be like.

One of the things that first appealed to me about EFC was the fact that all their work is grounded in the experiences of the young people they talk to. They speak with absolute authority when they say, as Kate did in her post a couple weeks ago, that much of the information young people receive about abortion is little better than anti-abortion propaganda. Not just partial, not just biased, not just alarming and distressing, but outright lies.

I didn’t know the extent of it. My school sex education was laughable, but we never had any outside visitors stop by to show us horrific photographs (and for that I am thankful as it would have made my job as the only feminist in the village even more difficult). Learning about EFC was the first time I really understood how hard it must be for young women to make choices about pregnancy and abortion, perhaps without support, and in many cases without the facts.

Education For Choice works to ensure that young people can access the information that is theirs by right, and make informed choices about pregnancy and abortion. By directly providing vital facts and resources to fight the frightening myths spread by the anti-abortion movement, they make a real difference to the lives of women and girls across the country.

And I mean ‘across the country’: EFC staff regularly trek around England providing training to equip teachers and other professionals with the practical advice and resources they need to have an open, balanced discussion about sex, pregnancy and abortion, and to allow young people to make up their own minds.

It would be nice if we didn’t have to fight for decent sex education, support for all pregnancy choices and free access to safe abortion every single decade, but that doesn’t look like changing any time soon. After recent talk of cutting the late term abortion time limit, we’ll be hearing a lot more about abortion during and possibly after the election. Rest assured you’ll be hearing a lot more from Education For Choice as well.

The EFC staff blogging here might not want to ask you for money, but a good trustee should also be a shameless fundraiser, so I *will* ask for your support. Education For Choice reaches thousands of young people every year on a shoestring budget, and anything you can give will help to make sure young people across the UK have the facts about abortion. You can make a donation online here.

This is the end of EFC’s month as guest bloggers. Thank you for having us – we’ve really enjoyed it, and we hope you’ll stay in touch. If you’d like more information about our work, or you’d like to get involved, please email Kate at kate [at] efc.org.uk. Also keep your eyes peeled for a notice about EFC’s brand new, very own blog, to be launched soon!

Sarah Jackson is a trustee of Education For Choice.

This is what I sent him, hastily scribbled in my lunch break. I was trying to capture the most important things I’ve learnt in my five years at the non-profit comms coalface:

A positive call to action

Rather than dwelling on the problems, these campaigns assume we know them already, and focus on getting us involved in solving them.

This is exactly what Oxfam’s Be Humankind ad campaign launched with last year, through a series of colourful billboards featuring thought-provoking slogans like “Get rich quick. Give”, and a short animation that focused on the world-changing power of ordinary people. The warm and fuzzy message of the film was nicely balanced by a bit of creepy animation, although I wasn’t very keen on the oral Care Bear stare at the end. I get the symbolism, but I don’t want to vanquish injustice by vomiting freedom. Can I be empowered in a less gross way, please? Thanks.

Christian Aid’s current Poverty Over campaign makes a similar appeal based on our power to improve the world, a power which is rooted in our humanness. They add a compelling twist to the message – poverty is a problem we created, so we can end it. It does help to make their goal seem more achievable, but it’s also an unfortunate reminder that if humans weren’t so powerful there’d be a whole lot less mess to clean up now. The campaign challenges people to explain why ending poverty is impossible and then counters them with reasons why it isn’t. This is a deft bit of supporter engagement, drawing people into the debate, and radiating confidence.

Words not pictures

By using typography and simple graphics rather than photos, these campaigns can make a case for common humanity but bypass the sentimentality of the ‘holding hands around the globe’ photographic oeuvre. Watch this quietly inspiring little animation about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s simple, inclusive and positive, without being sickly. There’s not a human face in sight, and no soaring strings in the background – it lets the words do the work.

It is impossible to represent humankind with two or three faces, and as soon as a campaign includes an image of a person it becomes divisive: “But I’m not black / white / happy / hungry / fabulously attractive, what does this have to do with me?”

Celebrating human power

Oxfam and Christian Aid encourage participation by creating an appealing inclusive collective identity which goes deeper than asking people to become an activist – they want you to become a good human. Julie Wood, Oxfam’s director of corporate communications said about Be Humankind: “A lot of people want to see change but feel useless when faced with the issues, but we are all in this together.”

Those last six words are key to the success of this approach. By invoking a common identity that has respect and intolerance of injustice at its heart, these campaigns make change seem possible through the power of collective action. It also reaches a warm, glowing hand into our technologically insulated and community-starved 21stC lives. For anyone with a swollen social conscience like myself, it’s heady stuff.

This is a neat way of tapping into the support of people who are interested in the issues but who are apathetic, or turned off by obviously emotional charity appeals. But what about people who still need convincing that they should care about poverty or injustice? Aiming for the lowest-hanging fruit makes sense though, and I’d be very interested to know how these campaigns have performed. Go human power!