Design Challenge
#1: How might we keep our communities in Singapore safe and healthy during the global COVID-19 pandemic?
Project Description
The “Be a Hero” Campaign seeks to both inform and involve the children to contribute to the COVID19 response by developing informational, creative, and informational video series. Each video will seek to explain complex issues in 5 minutes or less and will ask the child to do a specific action after. Visuals and language will be targeted for young kids ages 6-12 years old. There will be three seasons, aired weekly:
Season 1: Awareness
Season 2: Attitude
Season 3: Action
A following social media campaign for parents or siblings to feature some of the good works of the child. If possible, a simple certificate or badge from the ministry of Health and defence could be awarded to the children, acknowledging their contribution for national health security. Kids are our heroes.
Criteria #1: Value
When the COVID19 paralyzed the world, we were all busy keeping abreast to understand the scale and impact of the pandemic. Little did we know that there are people also affected by the pandemic who does not necessarily understand why certain measures were enforced to them: our young children. Week after week, we were able to pivot and enact appropriate actions: circuit-breaker, social distancing, work-from-home and home-based-learnings. We understand the threat and we realize the sacrifices needed to fight it.
We want to help young children in this journey by making them understand why certain things happen, help them process their emotions about the changes and support them in making meaningful contributions for the pandemic response in their own little ways.
Criteria #2: Inspiration
The Government recently run the #SGUnited Initiative – but the lack of focus on children is a clear gap to fill. Children have a lot of whys! Support for children such as helping them understand COVID19 as a virus, its implications on them and Singapore, the concept of social distancing and how it helps the situation, even naming the emotions they feel would be helpful. If anything, we are inspired to bring awareness to the young kids that brings understanding and understanding that leads to actions.
Criteria #3: Impact
This campaign will mainly support young children to thrive amidst the on-going health crisis through awareness-raising. It will seek to support mental well-being by enabling conversations between them and their parents. Finally, this campaign seeks to build ownership and accountability for young children as a citizen of Singapore, acknowledging that small actions can solve complex problems. We want to inspire a hero today, a leader tomorrow.
Criteria #4: Timeliness
Preparation for each season would be 1.5-2 months, from research, production to implementation. While the first season is being aired, the design team would continue to conceptualize and produce the next seasons. A communications strategy will be in place for social media outreach and media engagements.
Criteria #5: Systems Thinking
The design team would like to partner with the Ministry of Education for the development of video series content to ensure alignment of the content to current curriculum and accuracy of information.
Ministry of Health and Ministry of Defence if possible provide inputs and recognition for the young kids achievement.
Last but not the least, we would like to rally businesses, especially those that employ thousands of workers, to support rolling out the campaign as part of their corporate social responsibility.
