INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY 3(2+1)

Lesson 12 : Mass Methods

Campaign

A campaign is a group effort to promote something or it is a well organized plan for bringing about widespread adoption of a particular practice. It is an intense educational activity for motivating and mobilizing a community to action, to solve a problem or satisfy a need urgently felt by it. The central idea is that a better practice is kept before the people constantly during that time. People are shown repeatedly that this is a solution to a problem. Campaign methods can be used only after advocated practice is found acceptable to the local people.

Duration: A campaign may be for a single day on a theme like Water for life, for a few weeks as in Family planning, Breast feeding for a few months as in Vanamahotsava and for a few years as in ‘International Decade for Women Empowerment ’, International Decade for Girl Child, Aids awareness and control programmes campaign.

Purpose:

To encourage emotional participation of a large number of people and to foster a favorable psychological climate for quick and large scale adoption of an improved practice. (RHWEp photo with banner in streets )

Procedure:

1. Decide exactly what changes you expect to make and who is to make the changes or you should have a definite objective for a campaign.
2. Plan regular times and specific method for a campaign.
3. Write down a plan of events before you start the campaign.
4. List all the people who are involved in the campaign and inform your campaign manager to plan what their part will be in campaign.
5. Open your campaign by doing something attractive such as drama that focuses the attention on the problem.
6. Ensure technical service and supplies or arrange for equipment or supplies.
7. Work as per plan.
8. Announces the dates of campaign well in advance and build up the enthusiasm of the people.
9. Give publicity to the successful campaign and the leader responsible.
10. Arrange exhibits for drawing the attention of people to the campaign and its objectives of well publicity in advance to the campaign and its objective for encouraging the people.

Objectives

• To create mass awareness about an important problem or felt need of the community and encourage them to solve it.
• To promote widespread adoption of particular practice.
• To encourage to participate in new practice.
• To induce emotional participation of the community at the local level and create a favorable psychological climate for adoption of new practices.

Advantages:

1. A campaign teaches practices rather than principles
2. Especially suited to stimulate mass scale adoption of an improved practice in the shortest time possible
3. Facilitates exploitation of group psychology for introducing new practices
4. Successful campaigns create conducive atmosphere for popularizing other methods
5. Quick results with lowest cost
6. Builds up community confidence
7. This method is of special advantage in case of certain practices which are effective only when the entire community adopts them
8. Offers or recommends a solution to the people for its acceptance

Limitations:

• Applicable only for topics of community interest
• Emphasizes one idea at a time
• Success depends on cooperation of the community and their leaders
• Less suitable for practices involving complicated technicalities
• Requires adequate preparation, concerted efforts and propaganda techniques, and uninterrupted supply of critical inputs