The goal of this project was to create an outreach campaign for a local charity that would reach as many audiences as possible.
MTKO is a community organization that helps the homeless and relies heavily on donations and volunteers. I needed to reach those two parties, the homeless and nearly homeless who would benefit from their services, and the middle/upper class Lincoln community that would be able to provide donations and possibly volunteer — but these two groups have very different means of communicating. While a social media post was a great option for potential volunteers, most of the homeless people I would be trying to reach have no way of accessing social media, or rarely even the internet. I decided that the best way to ensure I was reaching both parties effectively was to create two separate modes of communication to reach each different part of my audience.
Instagram post:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CIB8ew_BRqn/
I decided the best option for the middle/upper class Lincolnites would be to reach them via social media, so that the message and information can be easily shared and reposted. Since I know instagram the best, this is the platform I chose to go with. For a post, you can have up to ten slides of information, which is great since I wanted to include info about nearly every program that is offered through MTKO — although I did struggle with balancing so much information and also making the slides readable. In addition, people who see the post can add it to their stories, which is something I have seen done a lot recently and allows for easy sharing.
For the homeless community, I decided to go with a poster that would theoretically be put up in the surrounding areas of where Matt Talbot Kitchen is located, as well as throughout Lincoln, so that needy families and homeless people can get all the information they need just from the poster, without needing to have a phone to call someone or look at the website. Another part of the poster that I tried to think about was those who are illiterate or speak a language other than English. In my research on making media for illiterate people, there wasn’t much information available, so I basically thought about it myself and tried to create a map that would be understandable even without being able to read the street names and made sure the poster could still provide them with information by including lots of graphics. I included a Spanish translation of the important information, since I have the most knowledge of Spanish and I know that we have a huge Spanish-speaking population in Lincoln. I had one of my Spanish-speaking friends double check my translation and help me with word choice. I am confident that this poster has the potential to reach a wide range of people in Lincoln.