Electing Champions for a Social Europe!
In 2013-2014, our big campaign is on the 2014 European Parliament Elections!
What do we want?
The overall goal of this campaign is to impact on the European elections by:
getting the support and commitment of candidates numerous enough to make a change, pressuring for a shift back to a European Union based on the respect of Human rights and social rights, giving priority to fighting poverty, social exclusion and inequalities, restoring balance between economic and Human needs, and restoring democracy.
The main objectives to achieve this goal are:
- Get the support and commitment of CANDIDATES (at least 1/3 Parliament and at least 1 candidate/country) and hold MEPs accountable for their commitments
- Contribute to a better reporting on poverty/exclusion/inequalities in the European and national MEDIA
- Build/strengthen ALLIANCES with other stakeholders who share our arguments
- EAPN supports its national members’ participation in the campaign
- National networks raise people’s awareness at grassroots level and encourage more people to vote VOTERS
The EAPN Secretariat presented a campaign’s strategy at the 2013 September Conference and again to the EXCO members in November 2013.
This strategy is for the whole network. it indictes what we’ll do at the European level, and at best will be applied/transposed/adapted at national level by the national networks (and adapted, depending on your own national context) , in the own organisations for EOs.
=> See the presentation of the strategy here. It contains all the information you need to get on board!
What tools do we use?
Core material
- EAPN MANIFESTO in Word format and PDF format
- EAPN POSTCARD, aimed at candidates and asking them to pledge to “make the fight against poverty, social exclusion and inequality a priority item on the Parliament and EU agenda by defending the development of an explicit European anti-poverty strategy and of an annual hearing of people experiencing poverty to monitor its implementation and progress.”
- See the postcard here in PDF format
- The print format (made with in-design design programme) is available here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2326147/EAPN%20Postcard%20Folder.zip
- a campaign BLOG that was presented at the November 2013 EXCO as well. not built yet, which also aims to respond to our campaign’s objectives.
- Presentation of the blog and how to use this blog
- Direct link to the blog http://electingchampionsin2014.net/
- NEW! A Storify platform, which is a social network service that allows allow users to create stories by importing content from various forms of media into a timeline. Users can search for content related to their story from sources such as Youtube, Twitter (one of the more popular ones), Instagram, Flickr, and Google, as well as other stories on Storify, and then drag that content into their own Storify story timelines. Users can add comments to the links that they provide within their stories, and can also embed urls in their stories. Users can also embed their own Storify stories elsewhere on the internet. It’s now active http://storify.com/EAPNEurope for us all to use.
It is vital that all EAPN members contribute to this blog, for several reasons:
- The campaign’s blog is the external main tool of the campaign – members’ contribution is key to the success of the campaign!
- On the one hand, it can’t be in several languages or we lose our readers; on the other hand, we have the issue of the different national contexts and languages
=> What contribution can you therefore give?
We know you can’t give too much time to it. So our proposal is that you write a few lines on your own news in English, providing a link to your own website or blog. This is a minimal investment of time that gives both visibility to your network / organization and credibility at the EU level.
- a specific item on the Campaign at the top of each FLASH newsletter
- LOGO, visual identity of the campaign (inspired by the pledge) – download here the LOGO in web-suitable resolution
- TEMPLATES for PPT, letters (with the campaign’s logo)
- PPT template (on demand, sent by email)
- Letter template (Word document)
- EMAIL SIGNATURE with main message and link to campaign’s blog in Word format (to copy/paste) and PDF (so as to see how it looks)
- Page on members’ room with all documents that can be used/reproduced, campaign’s strategy, who to resource to, how to use the blog…
Media relations
- Press releases (list on timeline – launch of campaign – …)
- Press kit (including videos interviews, statistics… also on blog)
Timeline
Key dates:
- 04/03/2014 – LAUNCH OF THE CAMPAIGN
- 08/05/2014 – COMMON DAY OF ACTION IN ALL COUNTRIES => common press release – available on 06/05/2014 on Members’ room. Please send to EAPN Secretariat what your network intends to do that day!
Other key dates – not fixed:
- Hearing in the European Parliament (June 2014)
- Meetings of National Networks with their candidates – NN communicate to Secretariat date of meeting + a few lines for the blog and photo
TIP! In your attempts to meet MEPs, you already know that you have the postcard you can have them sign and if possible take a photo with them or of them signing it.
We also encourage you to tweet it! most candidates are on Twitter. type their name on Twitter to find them. You can tweet for example:
“Candidate to European Elections (name of candidate) commits to fighting poverty! @EAPNEurope http://electingchampionsin2014.net/ #electingchampions #EP2014 @(twittername of the candidate)”
=> Along the message, it’s important to address it, ie to @EAPNEurope and to the candidate himself and to reference it with the twitter hashtag #EP2014.
You can also encourage the candidates to do it directly themselves. Make sure you respond and retweet it.
Working together
In order for us to coordinate well this campaign, we have proposed to have coordinators named in each national network.
This way, we all have one contact person from whom to get the information at national level on the campaign, as well as whom to provide information for the national network.
The coordinator is for instance responsible for sending EAPN Europe information that should be given visibility (to be put on the blog, on social media…), inform us all what they’re planning to do for the common action day…
=> See the shared document on google including the list of coordinators of the campaign, the timeline and calendar of events:
=> Several updates are sent regularly on the campaign. These have also been put on a shared folder online: https://drive.google.com/?authuser=0#folders/0B968lDqzzlOlQU9WNlFvV0w0R0U
You can contact Nellie Epinat (nellie.epinat@eapn.eu) EAPN’s communications officer anytime, for any question or comment related to the campaign.
Please inform her also of what your network/organisation is doing, and who’s coordinating the campaign as well in your network/organisation.
What EAPN members are already doing
We were informed by several members of what they are planning to do for this campaign. Please see link here (same as list of coordinators)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At68lDqzzlOldDZ2SV9xNFprOXAwbmZXZXJLM2ltamc&usp=sharing
