• by Larissa Faw , April 17, 2015

To remedy the disconnect that many Americans have between the immense poverty that exists halfway around the world in Sub-Saharan Africa --where 33 million children don’t have schools to attend--Young & Laramore (Y&L) has developed a pro-bono initiative for the non-profit Building Tomorrow, 
an organization whose mission is to catalyze support of access to quality education for students in East Africa.

The “Uneducate Yourself” campaign brings that issue front and center through a social call-to-action via Uneducate.Me, an interactive microsite that invites users to imagine how their lives would be different if they never had the opportunity to go to school.

The microsite pulls personal information from users' Facebook pages, and changes the lives they know to look like the lives they’d have if they had never gone to school. Uneducate.me also produces a shareable infographic that users are encouraged to post to social channels including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to spread Building Tomorrow’s message and help grow its base of believers. The campaign will be supported with social ad buys and some digital retargeting.

"Uneducate Yourself is primarily targeting millennials, ages 18-34," says Carolyn Hadlock, Principal, ECD, Young & Laramore. "We have a secondary target of people who have an affinity for global access to education issues. We know people who have traveled or lived abroad or who are invested in issues on an international scale understand the importance of Building Tomorrow's mission."

Building Tomorrow spent $230,462 on advertising, while it received $1.153 million from donations and in-kind contributions, according to its most recent financial report. Y&L, for its part, donated it services. "We did a search of potential groups to offer our services to and selected Building Tomorrow," says Hadlock. "We then made a commitment to apply our full range of services to them for a year at no cost."
Shortly after the conclusion of the Uneducate Yourself campaign, Building Tomorrow will launch a fundraising drive aimed at the new audience of core believers brought to the organization through Uneducate.Me.