The Challenge: The Global Resilience Partnership was seeking to raise understanding and visibility for the role of resilience in tackling global development issues over the long term. More specifically they wanted to leverage the work of their global network of 38 Challenge winners – from a series of competitions hosted by GRP to find innovative, scalable solutions – all working on different aspects of resilience across the Sahel and Horn of Africa and in Southeast Asia.
Our Approach: Marchmont delivered a comprehensive support package designed to make the complex, abstract concept of “resilience” come to life – in other words, to make it personal, tangible and urgent. This included an initial landscape analysis, which informed the communications planning. Marchmont created a detailed editorial calendar to identify opportunities for proactive media outreach on behalf of the Challenge winners. We also organised several media field visits of their work on the ground. Marchmont also ran communications workshops and strategic planning sessions to build capacity amongst Challenge winners so they could amplify their work in-house more effectively.
Outcomes: Marchmont secured a range of top-tier and specialist media coverage of GRP and its Challenge winners over a two-year period, including multiple articles from Reuters, The Telegraph, BBC, Voice of America, El Pais, Xinhua, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Devex, The Conversation, Quartz Africa, World Economic Forum, AllAfrica, CGTN Africa, USAID Climate Links, Inter Press Service, Zilient and Mongabay. Marchmont also managed the production of two documentary-style thematic videos on Challenge winners’ impact on the ground – one focusing on innovative financial products in rural Kenya and a second on flood resilient homes in Vietnam and Bangladesh – and helped promote an Investor Forum designed to attract additional funding to the Challenge winners.