Costa Rica is the first country in the world in abolishing its army.That’s why on World Peace Day, the Oscar Arias Foundation wanted to accomplish an action in which Costa Ricans could express themselves to the world. Making people conscious of the incredible waste global military expenditure represents.

Evidently, nowadays the most efficient and cheapest way to share messages globally is through Social Media.

However In Costa Rica 70% of the population have no access to the Internet.

IDEA We created a new communication channel that merges one of the oldest ways to send messages with one of the most modern ones; and we called it The Real Twitter. In one of the most important parks of the city thousands of Costa Ricans who didn’t have access to the internet, gathered around to write their 140 character messages, but on pieces of paper. Then all the messages were attached to homing pigeons who then flew many kilometres until reaching the other side of town where there was internet access.

As the pigeons arrived, messages were collected and tweeted by people with mobiles on their personal accounts and on the Foundation’s official accounts.Several communication mediums, gave us coverage placing "The Real Twitter" on the cover of several newspapers and on different TV reports.

On Peace International Day, #CostaRica became a trending topic on Twitter.

We created a new communication channel that merges one of the oldest ways to send direct messages with one of the most modern ones; and we called it The Real Twitter. In one of the most important parks of the city thousands of Costa Ricans who didn’t have access to Internet, gathered to write their 140 character messages, but in pieces of paper.Then all the messages where attached to homing pigeons who then flew many kilometers until reaching the other side of town where there was internet access. As the pigeons arrived, messages where collected and tweeted by people with mobiles on their personal accounts and on the Foundation’s official accounts.

Several communication media, local and international, gave us coverage placing The Real Twitter on the cover of several newspapers and giving it over 10 minutes on different TV reports.

1,000 pigeons transported 5,000 tweets, which were shared to over 100,000 followers around the world.

Tweets were retweeted and shared throughout the world on the foundation’s Facebook accounts receiving more than 10,000 likes.

On Peace International Day, #CostaRica became a trending topic on Twitter.

And the most important goal achieved, was that we gave Costa Ricans the chance to share their messages directly to the world.