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Case Study: Kilimanjaro Education Foundation Raises Awareness to Improve Education in Africa through Multimedia News Releases

Background:
Kilimanjaro Education Foundation (KEF), founded by Todd Grossman in 2006, strives to improve education and to build school facilities for underprivileged children in Tanzania and other countries bordering Mt. Kilimanjaro. KEF's volunteers and directors share in and impart not only the Foundation's passion for children and education, but also in KEF's core values of honesty, integrity, creativity and imagination.

Without an effective education, the future looks very bleak for young people who are struggling to get an education even at the most fundamental level. Basic materials American students take for granted: school supplies, basic school buildings, and sanitary bathroom facilities are sorely lacking in many of these third world countries.

KEF inaugurated its charity projects with a Mt. Kilimanjaro climb in the summer of 2007. The volunteer climbers participating in the seven day trek to the top of Africa raised funds through corporate and individual sponsorships. The proceeds from the initial climb were used to build bathroom facilities for a school in the nearby village of Olturoto and prevented the school from being closed due to the poor sanitary conditions.

To raise initial awareness of Kilimanjaro Education Foundation and the upcoming climb to benefit the Olturoto School, two traditional text press releases were generated and distributed to the media and online sources – the first in June 2007 and the second in July 2007.  Both releases included information on the Mt. Kilimanjaro climb and KEF and, in the case of the second release, an announcement that Holland & Knight lawyer, Tamara Carmichael, was participating in the climb.

Challenge:
The initial climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro was completed and the bathrooms of the school in Olturoto were built – saving the school from closure and helping the students continue their education. Though the first two traditional press releases helped foundation awareness, Kilimanjaro Education Foundation needed to raise public awareness even further for the second climb in the summer of 2008, and to raise funds and continue the development of school buildings in Tanzania.

Kilimanjaro Education Foundation’s target audiences were media and the general public.

Solution:
The Foundation decided that a Multimedia News Release (MNR) would help create the public awareness that KEF was seeking and turned to MultiVu, PR Newswire’s multimedia and broadcast division, to help create the MNR.

The first MNR, released on February 20, 2008, was a celebration of the success of the first climb to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro and the building of the new bathroom facilities for the local school in Olturoto. The MNR was also created to raise awareness for the second trek to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro scheduled for August 2008 which was being held to raise funds and continue to improve the quality of education in impoverished local areas. It included a video clip of the groundbreaking ceremony for the bathroom facility in Olturoto, high-resolution photos of the local children and the climbers, links to the KEF website and other related pages, and social media bookmarks to enable users to share the story.

After the success of the first MNR, the Foundation quickly followed it up with their second MNR in March, 2008. The second MNR featured two Canton Intermediate School teachers, who wrote and recorded a 14 song album to raise funds to build a new classroom for the children in Olturoto. The songs feature back up vocals by the sixth grade students in the Connecticut school and lyrics aimed at comparing the similarities and stark differences that American and African students face. The MNR featured three audio clips of songs from the CD with links to buy the CD directly from the MNR, for a minimum $10 donation. It also included downloadable high-resolution photos, links to the KEF and Canton Intermediate School websites, social book-marking links, and more.

Results:
The MNRs built upon the initial awareness generated from the text-only releases in 2007.

• The June 2007 text-only press release received 173 public views and 56 media views.
• The July 2007 text-only press release received 441 public views and 99 media views.
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• The February 2008 text-only version of the MNR received 692 public views and 99 media hits.
• The March 2008 text-only version of the MNR received 505 public views and 127 media hits.
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• The full multimedia version of the MNR’s received the following results:
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• The February 2008 MNR received nearly 2,500 page views with over 1,100 streams of the video clip.
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• The March 2008 MNR received over 1,400 page views, 81 audio clip plays, and 25 image downloads.

Despite this MNR being an online campaign, “Better Connecticut,” a local television show, discovered the story and invited KEF and the Canton Intermediate School sixth grade teachers and students to appear on the morning show and perform two songs from the CD.

“Seeing is believing and inspiring – it is for this reason we decided to move forward with an MNR to announce our partnership with Canton Intermediate School and the launch of the CD,” said Todd Grossman, founder of KEF. “We didn't want our news release to get lost in the shuffle with other text releases so we added various multimedia components. We were extremely pleased with the results of the MNR, and I am convinced that we were able to effectively provide a call to action and engage our target audience through the use of this multimedia vehicle. Traffic to the website has increased 300% with a daily average of more than 40 hits, and the CD continues to sell. The Foundation continues to reap the benefits of the MNR, which has the same look and feel as our website and is used as a direct marketing tool.”