When violence threatens to break out on city streets, in the run-up to an election, or in a land dispute, how can community leaders instantly reach out to urge calm and quash false rumors? PopTech teamed up with Sisi Ni Amani, a Nairobi-based organization that uses mobile technologies for peace promotion, to drive subscriptions to their novel mobile violence prevention service and craft behavior-change SMS messaging models.
Stories are integral to how PopTech extends the reach of its initiatives and part of how it scales its work. PopTech wanted to document the work of its initiative PeaceTXT in order to connect with hearts and minds, both in meetings with funders and in larger presentations, such as the PopTech stage.
Our vision was built around a previous interview with one of the youth involved in the project. We filmed a couple of days in his life while we were already in Nairobi to document a PopTech event. We followed him to XYZ, xyz, and xyz to show cyz.
A post-election survey showed that 46% of respondents forwarded a Sisi Ni Amani message to others. Around 85% of respondents reported talking with others about messages, and 92% reported that the messages had a positive impact. Videos from this series were featured on PBS Need to Know online and on Forbes.