Sparking a National Movement… Or Observance Like National Home Visiting Week
It’s been nearly two years since we first started working with a client in the home visiting space.
From Early Impact Virginia, a statewide alliance helping elevate and support local programs, to The Institute for the Advancement of Family Support Professionals, a national nonprofit dedicated to advancing the home visiting profession through career development and resources, these are some of the organizations making important strides to strengthen the young families in our communities.
Home visiting is an evidence-based, voluntary service where trained professionals visit pregnant women and families with young children (0-5) in their homes to provide support, education and resources. It is an important early intervention strategy that promotes family wellbeing, builds independence and improves outcomes for children and parents alike.
When The Institute came to us looking for a way to get more attention on home visiting and the home visitors who are leading the way, we said, “Have you considered a national observance?”
That’s where our work began.
Step One: Getting the Right Players Engaged
It seems like anyone, or anything, can get an observance these days. If International Talk Like a Pirate Day exists, there’s no reason why the thousands of home visitors across the country shouldn’t get the recognition they deserve.
After hammering out some of the specifics — including name, focus, length and time of year — we knew we needed to get the right people on board.
Home visiting has long been championed as a bipartisan issue, and what better way to bring people together and make it “official,” then engaging a state official to introduce the observance with a proclamation? We tapped two former governors (and now U.S. senators) from different states across the aisle that had a history of supporting home visiting — Chuck Grassley (R – Iowa) and Mark Warner (D – Virginia), and they eagerly obliged.
Next, it was important that national partners, associations and coalitions in the industry were aware of our efforts and planned to participate. Molina Healthcare agreed to sponsor, which helped fund prizes for specially selected home visitors that would be recognized as National Home Visitors of the Year. Additionally, after doing some research about other home-visiting-related observances, we found other states like North Carolina and counties like Los Angeles County that had started recognition days and weeks, so we picked their brains and referenced their resources as a starting point.
At this point, the dominoes were falling into place and the excitement was brewing.
Step Two: Creating Guideposts and a Runway
Next, once the structure is in place and there’s buy-in, it’s important to equip stakeholders, and really anyone who wants to get involved, with the resources, templates and support that would help alleviate some of the burden to create original content AND help amplify the messages your organization is trying to convey.
Our team got to work on the National Home Visiting Week Toolkit.
If you scroll through the comprehensive guide, you’ll find concrete ways to support the observance and spread awareness, key messaging, tips for sharing and balancing data and human-interest stories, press release templates, social media templates and recommendations, a sample Letter to the Editor and proclamation, logos and other graphics. The toolkit was created for every home visiting program across the country.
For many of these programs, there may not be marketing specific teams or even individuals, so it was particularly important for assets to be simple and replicable, building a solid foundation for organizations to make their own. If you want to take it a step further, like we did, you can host a webinar to dive deeper into the toolkit, answer questions and help brainstorm additional opportunities.
Step Three: Uplifting the Heart of the Story
Once folks around the country have the resources to run with National Home Visiting Week, it’s time to shed light into the specifics of why this issue matters and is relevant to people who may have never heard of it. In a field that is so human-centric, it’s naturally all about digging up stories about the people and families impacted by home visiting.
That’s where we were able to lean into our identified National Home Visitors of the Year.
Programs across the country nominated home visitors for their outstanding contributions to the families they serve. This was a gold mine of content and stories.
We interviewed the five awardees, wrote blog posts and recorded a short video from our interviews that could be used for social media — and voila, you’ve put real people and real stories at the forefront of your message.
There were so many great stories that even the nominees who wished to be recognized were shared in a blog post and on social media. Ultimately, you may be able to create a national observance for just about anything, but if you want it to meaningfully reach people, you need to show them why it matters and WHO it matters for.
The most successful observances, especially starting out, are those that rally together a strong network of people and organizations, i.e. your biggest ambassadors and amplifiers. Then, each subsequent year, you simply get to build on the momentum you’ve created.
Before you know it, you’ve got a movement.
Amanda Christian
Amanda has always had a knack for project management, a sharp eye for details and an unwavering commitment to AP style. She brings content strategy, certifications in email marketing and media relations savvy to the table for a variety of clients like Hilldrup, UnitedHealthcare and the Virginia Spirits Board.
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