#MealsforGrace by St. Mary’s Catholic Church (CSR Initiative)

#MealsforGrace

Church reaches out to 6,000 underpriviledged workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Case

The Covid-19 pandemic affected livelihoods globally. Most of the UAE workforce was adversely affected by the global health crisis leaving thousands helpless and sometimes with no food to eat.

St. Mary’s Catholic Church launched a humanitarian initiative to aid scores of expats, families, and underprivileged workers affected by the Pandemic by providing meals.

Matrix PR volunteered to donate our time and resources to create awareness in a bid to rally other like-minded organizations and well-wishers to come out and help these workers during the difficult period.

Objectives

Objectives

To create awareness for the initiative titled "Meals for Grace" initiated by the St. Mary’s Cathoilic Church

To attract volunteers and sponsors to support the campaign

To identify families and individuals who were in need

Challenges

Challenges
  • Movement restrictions due to the curfews and rising number of COVID cases

  • Rising number of COVID cases

  • Huge number of people reaching out asking for support

Research

We spoke to volunteers, the organizers, and sponsors to get an idea of the kinds of stories that would be possible.

We visited one of the restuarants and saw first hand the food preparation process.

Our research showed that due to the pandemic and lock-down the average hours spent online and video consumption of content was at an all time high.

Campaign Strategy

Campaign Strategy

The agency created three key messages to share with the media:

#MealsforGrace campaign, human stories, and the Good Samaritans.

The Agency pitched multiple angles to leading publications and tapped into it extensive media relations to garner maximum exposure.

To ensure that the news reached as many people as possible, the agency also pitched for visual stories including social media accounts of leading publications and online news portals.

The strategy was based on research that showed that the average time spent online had substantially increased. This was particularly true of video content.

  • Three Key Messages

  • Multiple Story Hooks

  • Focus on Video and Online Content

Execution & Tactics

Execution

One Media, Many Beats

  • Multiple journalists covering different beats from the same publication were targeted with tailor-made story hooks relevant to their niche.

Video Content

  • The Agency collaborated with a restaurant to create a video story for a leading national daily including behind-the-scenes access right up to the distribution of the food parcels.

Ray of Light

  • At a time of generally negative news due to the Pandemic, the Agency focused on the positive stories, the human angle, and the number of people impacted by the initiative.

Results

Results

National Coverage

Over 10 tier 1 and key online publications featured the 6,000 meals story

Increase in Volunteers

The widespread coverage led to more volunteers coming forward to offer their services

Video Story

The National sent their video team and created a video story that was shared on their social media platform

Arabic Coverage

The various angles received excellent coverage from the Arabic media

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