How do study visits help us engage DRC volunteers in our international work?
As a part of the 4th strategic ambition in the International Strategy we aim to engage the Danish volunteers and local branches in our work all over the world. Study visits is one way to do that.
Communication plays an important part when securing the public support for DRC projects abroad.
Our more than 200 local branches are able to support the international work through the Twinning program where they can choose exactly the project(s) the volunteers and board members at their branch find interesting.
Instead of just transferring their annual profit from the second-hand shops they get to actively choose which projects to support and that secures a higher level of ownership, commitment and pride amongst the volunteers.
Volunteers as local Red Cross ambassadors
As important as it is for us to engage the Danish volunteers we also need their help as local ambassadors to maintain the support of the public.
The volunteers make it possible for us to reach an audience we might not normally reach through our established platforms and channels such as national media, web or social media.
Some of the ways volunteers do that is through local media and presentations at local businesses, workplaces, schools, organizations and such.
Experiencing with their own eyes
To make sure our volunteers have the best conditions to act as ambassadors we provide news, facts and figures from the Twinning programs year-round.
We also organize two study visits every year to visit Twinning countries.
The communications department prepare the volunteers before departure. They take part in a seminar that focuses on communication, local press work, social media, photos and they are well informed of our projects in the country they are visiting.
When arriving the country coordinator will have prepared a program for the volunteers, so they return with first hand experiences from our projects.
They meet local volunteers of the national society, they meet beneficiaries and they return home with a much better understanding of the work that the DRC performs abroad and how they themselves are a part of this and the RCRC movement.
Once at home, the real work begins
In November 2018 a group of 11 volunteers visited Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya. And all these new impressions are now being passed forward to their local communities.
Showing through local advocacy the effect of the work of both the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the Danish Red Cross in particular.
After returning this group of volunteers have had more than 16 stories in local medias and close to 50 posts on social media about our projects in Kenya and multiple presentations. And new stories are still showing up on our daily media monitoring.
