"Help Rahul Campaign" : Part-2

Media management

The idea came from Saurabh Bakshi, who on the very first day(Monday,29th March) of our College Campaign, suggested me that if we could somehow get Rahul’s case broadcast on a NEWS Channel then it would make the things lot easier. So I put up this idea in front of other members of the team. It was considered but couldn’t be implemented may be due to the fact that at that time, everybody was focussed at College level Collection.


So ultimately it came up to us(me and Harpreet) to implement it. I had already put up my efforts and plans to get it published in print media but there was some mis-communications and I was told to stop dealing with print media.


It all started on April 2nd, the first day of our Public fund raising Campaign. We(me and Harpreet) went to meet the officials of E TV. There we met Mr. Amit Srivastava who listened with concern and advised us to visit other News Channels too in this regard. Had he not encouraged our efforts and advised us on this, we might have dumped any further efforts in this direction.
So, then we visited SADHNA News Channel. There we got positive response from Mr. Ajay Tripathi. He told us to organise a fund raising Campaign. He assured us that he will get it covered and broadcast a story based on that on his Channel. We were very encouraged by his response. He showed us the way forward. Thereafter we visited Azad News Channel, there too we got very encouraging response.


And at last, we hit the JACKPOT- SAHARA SAMAY News Group. We knew that if we are able to convince these guys for broadcasting our story then our media target is almost achieved. So we entered fully prepared to lay our hand on the big fish. We met the Bureau Chief there. I talked to him with all my Communication skills at the best. My aim was to impress him with my talk and try to involve him emotionally by telling the facts, so that he agrees on running a story on us. After listening to us for about 5 minutes he put his hand on the Buzzer, a reporter came and he was instructed by the Bureau Chief- “इनके बाइट्स ले लो”. 


So our work was done. Then we gave our bytes and left the place.
Thereafter we planned the Fund Raising Campaign in front of Jyoti Cineplex in the evening. I told Mritunjay to inform everybody to come for the Campaign.We got late by about half an hour.We called three News Channels and requested them to Cover our Campaign. By the end of our gathering there, more than 6 media houses had come to cover our Campaign. Our first Public fund raising Campaign was hugely successful. We hogged the media limelight and the Collection from this day’s Campaign alone touched 70k. It inspired us to work harder.


The next day(April 3rd, Sunday), we were called by SAHARA SAMAY News Group. We were required for a Live session. There Ravi and Harpreet sat in the broadcasting room and they were interviewed by a TV anchor who was talking from the studio in Noida. Our session went live at 11 am. A youtube link to that recording here-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W75pCa0lm8


I was in seventh heaven after this. Besides they told us that a similar story will be broadcast in Bihar-Jharkhand region too(which we later found out to be true). 

With this, other News Channels(like Time Today TV) too started broadcasting our story. Print media now had no option but to publish our Campaign with prominence as it was already being aired on all the major News Channels. So we started getting full media coverage and it helped a lot.

Our vigorous media Campaign helped us in three major ways- 
1) It fetched us some monetary help that we needed most.
2) It created a lot of Public awareness about our campaign and about Rahul’s plight, thus making our target much easier to achieve.
3) The media attention that we got, inspired us to work harder. Watching media persons lapping up our story actually invigorated us.

If you have to see the effect of media, just have a look at the ongoing IPL controversy. Apart from that, if you go a little back, just try to remember Manu Sharma’s Conviction(in Jessica Lal case), Ashok Todi’s CBI investigation(in Rizwan and Priyanka case), and in the recent past- SSP Rathore’s investigation(in Ruchika Girhotra case). These are just some cases to prove that media do play a major role in helping us achieve our target. And the case was no different here, we did get lot of help due to our media campaigns. Personally I would peg the combined commercial value of media campaign at more than 1 lac(though it is debatable). But anyway, our task was made lot easier due to support from electronic and print media.

So I think our media Campaign played a major role in achieving our target and I feel so proud that we just two persons(me and Harpreet) were able to handle the media(specially the News Channels) without any small help from any influential person.
 
Proud to get the big thing done !!!!
 
to be continued..........

"Help Rahul Campaign" : Part-1

The Great Campaign: from My Perspective

This was the first major campaign of my life in which I got totally involved (physically as well as mentally) forgetting everything about my own life.

But after successful finishing of the Campaign, I had such a satisfying feeling that I can’t express here in words.

To Know who Rahul is and what his problem was, pleases Click HERE.

The Campaign ran for 10 days and by the 11^th day we had achieved our target.

There were a total of 30-35 persons involved dedicatedly in this campaign.10- 12 persons were in the core managing as well as execution group and the remaining 20-25 persons were in the supporting and execution group. Without these 30-35 persons, collection of such a large amount would still have been a distant dream.....

As soon as I got to know the details on the 27^th March night, I got active.

At the same time (27^th night,10 pm) our result had been uploaded on site, so I couldn’t do much work on it on 27^th night. But since 28^th morning I got working over it. I first started working on my personal idea-ONLINE campaign. For that I put all the details of Rahul’s case on my blog here-

shantihp.blogspot.com/2010/03/save-his-life-please.html

After that I started pleading/appealing all the Celebrities and other twitter friends to donate money for this cause.

On the 28^th eve, we had a meeting in the parking area around TIME institute. There about 25 persons were present. We talked about our plans and how we are going to implement it. Our first target was collection from our own College.

From Monday,30^th March, our College level Collection was underway in full flow.

By the 11^th Day,4^th April(since our Campaign started), we had actually surplus money coming into our hands. Our target was to Collect Rs. 6 lacs for Rahul’s operation and on the 11^th Day our Collection had surpassed that target by about 50k. We were actually finding it hard to stop the inflow of money. As soon as we had reached our target, we had informed everybody to stop any further collection but finally we had in our hand an amount that we had never anticipated to be able to collect initially.

Such was the success of our Campaign...... Our Campaign was hugely successful and I really feel proud to be part of it.

In this whole Campaign, myself and Harpreet worked hand in hand. In each activity we took part together. On College level we had the responsibility of Collection from our own classmates and the faculty members of our Dept. We performed that part very well.

Apart from that, in our outside Campaign, we(me and Harpreet) managed to convince all major News Channels here to cover our public Campaign and broadcast a comprehensive story on Rahul’s plight. Along with that, all major print media started giving us spaces in their Newspapers when they saw major News Channels already lapping up the story. So our media efforts too played an important role in fund raising as media created a lot of public awareness about Rahul’s case.

As I wrote in my first few lines, this was the first major Campaign of my life. On getting the News of achieving our target, I was in seventh heaven. This was my most noble effort till now and I will never be able to forget these precious days. I was completely submerged in the Campaign for the whole 10 days. In the first 3-4 days, when our collection had not crossed even 1 lakh, I was unable to have good sleep, I used to sleep at 1am and then wake up at 4 am for my ONLINE campaign. It was only after our collection crossed 1.5 lakhs that I felt a bit relaxed and started having my normal sleep.

These 11 days will remain the most memorable days for me for long. This was my first event in which I played a major role(at least I think so)and worked totally independently that too for a for a noble cause. In these 11 days I laughed, got ecstatic, cried multiple times(sometimes publicly too) and even had a serious fight. But still I am really very-very happy that I took part in this great Campaign.

I learnt so many things in these 11 days. Some very vital lessons that I learnt are mentioned below-

1) Don’t expect much from persons who seem to have lot of money, power and peer group to flaunt. Most of the works are done by lesser known persons whom you would never have expected to do much.

2) If you come forward and take an initiative to do something, you must have the guts to face some firm, pointed fingers at you.

3) Generally (by default), majority lies with the powerful. So even if you are right in doing something and have some conflicts with someone, do not expect others to support you because very few persons have the guts to stand up for the right.

Anyway, these 11 days will always remain fresh in my memory . I am really glad to be involved in this and will always cherish the memory of these days........

to be continued.................