The Look Beyond Borders film launched in May 2016 by Amnesty Poland was a viral sensation with over 1 billion views (other sources than AI started to share it). But some commented that the video owes its emotion to the editing,and not to the participants’ genuine reactions. Therefore we decided to take the concept to the next stage which involves globalising it beyond Europe and live streaming the experiment directly onto Facebook Live from 4 global locations: Sydney, Mexico City, Nairobi, London, touched by a refugee problem. We wanted users all over the world experience live connection with refugees and their stories. The overall purpose of the live event was to draw attention to how refugees’ human rights are under threat around the world and show that refugees have their own stories to tell.

24 hours before, the event was promoted by a teaser video with footage from the Look Beyond Borders film to build intrigue about the upcoming event in 15 countries.  The experiment took place in a live setting, and the locals didn’t know that they are about to meet refugees – meaning that the online audience will see their emotional reactions. Communication started with an event broadcast on Facebook Live from four cities in the world: Sydney, Nairobi, London, and Mexico City. The participants were to look each in the eyes for four minutes. It was inspired by an experiment that proved that 4-minute eye contact gets people closer to each other more than anything else. The experiment, broadcast live, was attended by people from Australia, Kenya, Great Britain, and Mexico as well as refugees from such countries as Ethiopia, Democratic Republic, Afghanistan or Syria.

I Welcome campaign had two objectives: firstly to build awareness of the issue by engaging emotions and drawing attention to the fate of refugees and, secondly, to cause real financial support to flow to Amnesty International.

And we managed to achieve both objectives during the campaign. In the first stage, we used videos and live broadcasting to reach nearly 8 million people across 15 countries,  including 4 countries targeted directly with live broadcasting plus additional 11 neighbours – an extra goal of our communication.  Thanks to this effort we improved awareness of the refugee issue worldwide.

In the second stage, we focused on driving those people who have already engaged in the initial stage, so that they start contributing donations to Amnesty International. Our actions helped involve over 64 thousand people to take a pledge and support Amnesty International.