MANY people have the mistaken notion that only business companies with well-nigh unlimited financial resources are capable of undertaking public-relation projects that help improve people’s lives, especially the underprivileged sectors of society.
Civic clubs, like the Rotary, Lions, Jaycees, Zonta and the others can also do it so if they have members who are PR professionals or at least knowledgeable enough about the basics of PR, and have the creativity and imagination needed to conceive and put together well-planned and effectively executed PR projects,
One such successful project I am personally familiar with, having been a member of the club for some 25 years, is the Alay Sining project launched by the Rotary Club of Makati West (RCMW) in 2009 to help generate awareness and raise more funds for the club’s flagship humanitarian project, the Gift of Life (GOL) program.
The Gift of Life program
THE Gift of Life program is one of the major projects of Rotary International, the basic objective of which is to save the lives of as many children as possible suffering from congenital heart defect or coronary heart disease (CHD). CHD has been the most common cause of death of children in their infancy or at a very young age.
Because the rate of CHD was high in the Philippines, causing thousands of deaths among children every year, the RCMW in 2004 decided to adopt the GOL program in the country. This happened during the term of then RCMW President Larry Ocampo, with the encouragement and support of his father, the late past president Adrian Ocampo, and Lou del Rosario, a Fil-American director of Gift of Life International (GOLI) in the United States and past president of the Rotary Club of Elmsford in New York, United States.
In coordination with GOLI, GOL programs are being undertaken by Rotary Clubs around the world with the help of partner-doctors who do the operations either for free or for nominal fees, as well as in cooperation with partner hospitals which make their facilities and patient-care services available at highly reduced costs. The clubs pay for the other expenses incurred aside from those of the operation and hospitalization.
The Rotary Clubs raise the funds for their programs either through contributions from among its members or from outside donors, including individuals, business companies, foundations and the like. The clubs also hold various fund-raising PR projects, such as the Alay Sining project, which was the project RCMW came up with in 2009.
The Alay Sining project
ESSENTIALLY, the Alay Sining is an exhibit-sale of sculptures of the country’s leading and up-and-coming sculptors organized by RCMW annually since 2009. The sculptors share the proceeds from the sale of their works with the club to fund more free heart operations to save the lives of children born with CHD from indigent families that could not afford the high cost of such operations.
The founding father of the Alay Sining project was the late National Artist for Landscape Architecture Ildefonso “Chitong” Santos, who used his considerable prestige and influence with many of the country’s top sculptors to convince them to join the exhibit-sale.
At the same time, the project would—and has helped—gain recognition for the art of sculpture in the country in which Filipinos have excelled since ancient times to the present with the likes of National Artists Guillermo Tolentino, Napoleon Abueva and Abdulmari Imao, and younger ones like Ed Castrillo, Ramon Orlina, Sajid Imao and Michael Cacnio.
Under the inspirational leadership of Chitong Santos, and the active support and cooperation of the members of the Alay Sining Committee, the officials and all the members of RCMW and the Rotary International (RI) District to which it belongs (RI 3830), the club has managed to hold the Alay Sining exhibit-sale with increasing success year after year since 2009.
PR tools used
THE club has used various PR tools to gain awareness and support for the project, such as press briefings, special interviews and coverages with the country’s leading print, television and radio organizations, and advertorials in partnership with a major business newspaper.
It also made increasing use in recent years of the “New Media” or electronic media through e-mails, text messaging, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Messenger, Viber and all the other channels of communications. Being free and with wide, direct and practically unlimited access to their target publics, the latter media has proven to be a very cost-effective means of gaining awareness and widespread support for Alay Sining and its ultimate beneficiary, the GOL program.
Proofs of success
EVIDENCE of the Alay Sining project’s success has been the growth in the number of participating sculptors from just over 20 at the beginning, to nearly 60 in last year’s event, and enough money was raised to be able to fund more heart operations for babies and children with CHD to an average of four a month from only one before Alay Sining started.
The number of operations has been further boosted with the help of medical missions organized in the last few years by Fil-American Rotary Club officials in the United States, in partnership with doctors from leading American hospitals.These missions were held in cooperation with local doctors and headed by RCMW Director (and The Outstanding Young Men Awardee for Medicine) Dr. Karl Reyes, have been able to perform heart operations on children of up to a dozen or more in one week.
A shining example
THE success of the Alay Sining project shows how, with the proper, imaginative and effective use of PR, and with deep passion and commitment for their cause from the members, even nonprofit organizations like civic clubs, can generate significant public awareness and support for their humanitarian projects.
The Alay Sining project of the Rotary Club of Makati West is one shining and lasting example of this.
(Note: This year’s Alay Sining exhibit-sale will be held from November 12 to 15, at the Gallery, Greenbelt 5.)
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the International Public Relations Association, the premier association for senior professionals around the world. Rene Nieva is the chairman and CEO of Perceptions Inc.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer the readers’ questions about public relations. Please send your comments and questions to askipraphil@gmail.com.