Since the main challenge was to get donations to help a cause, we needed an idea that makes the situation of current medical condition of underprivileged countries known to the developed world, while at the same time activate people to donate money for the cause. Why? It is hard to keep motivating people to give money while at the same time assuring them that their donations will reach the right place. For this we needed to activate people such that they emotionally get involved. Therefore we created a direct connection between donor and the portrayed person. Portraid’s first project IseeYousee: 88 Portraits were photographed by a well know German photographer Thomas Rusch. As an activation we exhibited the Portraids at the Moroccan embassy in Berlin and online. The exhibition served as a splendid medium communicating a problem and activates people enough to buy the portraits, and in effect, donate money.

Portraid was implemented through its first project IseeYousee for the Abury foundation. The main challenge for Portraid was to create a direct and personal connection from the donor to the person receiving the donation, promoting the fact that some people simply can’t afford even the smallest surgery, and in doing so activate our target group to donate to a specific cause. 88 portraits, taken by famous German photographer Thomas Rusch were exhibited at the Moroccan embassy in Berlin as well as put on sale on the website portraid.org.

To generate momentum, we launched the website at the same day as the March edition of the National Geographic magazine was released, in which Portraid was featured as an 8 page detailed article. Both mediums highlighting the upcoming exhibition in the Moroccan Embassy and encouraged the viewer with a 90 seconds descriptive clip and a 14-minute documentary to purchase a Portraid.

With Portraid we had a cross-media reach of nearly 130 million impressions making the problem a widely known issue, but what could be more of a result than giving back precious sight to 88 people who, otherwise, could have faced total blindness.

The portraits, taken by famous German photographer Thomas Rusch, were exhibited at the Moroccan embassy in Berlin. The exhibition was an overwhelming success —all of the portraits were sold through multiple channels within days after the launch. The result of which is: The artisans featured in the Portraits will now receive their free cataract operations in June. Portraid was also featured as a detailed article in the National Geographic which further drove curiosity to the website www.portraid.org and raised awareness of this new approach of helping people through the medium of photography.