The Countdown to End FGM - Firehaus & UN Women UK

The 6th of February was ‘International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation’. Unfortunately, the stats are stark - on average it’s estimated that every 10 seconds a young girl is mutilated by FGM. They’re usually under 5 when this happens.

It’s difficult to understand how this can happen, but FGM is unfortunately a complex issue, wrapped up in cultural and political identities and will take time to resolve. That’s why Firehaus are proud to be part of UN Women UK’s recent campaign, part of their global commitment to ending FGM by 2030.

Here’s the story of how it happened...

Give me the freedom of a tight brief

UN Women’s UK arm exists to ensure the global values of women’s Safety, Choice and a Voice become a reality on the ground. During the ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence’ in 2017 and 2018, they created the homegrown brand-building campaign #DrawALine, reaching huge audiences for the first time. The challenge was now converting this interest into engagement.

In 2019 they focused on driving funds to support programmes to deliver solutions. UN Women UK needed results, fast, and approached Firehaus to help them.

Identifying and overcoming donor apathy

We quickly identified that two barriers in the way of their goal:

First, being part of the global UN Women brand was both a blessing and a challenge. They could clearly demonstrate where they were doing good, from on the ground grassroots solutions to helping governments design more equal policy. But on the other hand, the UN connotations of global scope and assumption of government funding (when in actual fact UN Women is 98% funded by voluntary contributions), didn’t help convince the average person to put their hand in their pocket - especially as their research showed UK donors are much more likely to give to local charities than international ones.

Secondly, although violence against women was obviously a worthy subject, it was too broad to elicit a direct response. Donors rightly like to know where their money is going, and this wouldn’t suffice. UN Women UK asked us to focus on a strong narrative message to deliver the greatest impact for women and girls around the world.

Given the scope of UN Women programmes around the world, there was a lot to choose from. But, then we saw the numbers on female genital mutilation...

A damaging practice at a terrifying scale

There are around 200m women alive now who have experienced female genital mutilation, with millions of girls at risk each year. Many girls are cut before they reach the age of 5.

Although the prevalence of FGM is reducing against population growth, it’s growing in absolute numbers. By 2030, more than one in three girls worldwide couldl be born in the 30 countries where FGM is most prevalent, putting 68 million girls – most under 5 – at risk of being cut.

UN Women is working hard to end FGM around the world by 2030. But the average Brit, although generally aware of the problem of FGM, is in the dark when it comes to the scale of it. 

Bringing it to life in communications without shock tactics

The UN Population Fund estimates that in 2019, 4.1 million girls were cut. By reframing this as an average of one girl cut within every 10 seconds, we were able to convey the scale of the problem.

But we still needed to capture attention without relying on the shock tactics we all know are doing the charitable sector more harm than good. Luckily, UN Women UK are a well connected unit, and were able to connect the work to a series of influential advisors and campaigners who were willing to support the campaign to capture the attention of the British public.

So, with the help of our partners Hurricane Media, Spark Foundry, Tapestry and photographer Paul Whitfield, the Countdown to End FGM campaign was born.

Taking part in the 16 Days of Activism

During the 16 days between 25 November and 10 December, the countdown campaign went live in the UK against the backdrop of the global campaign to end violence against women. Leveraging the urgency of the message, Spark Foundry were able to generate a quarter of a million pounds of free media value to get the message out to the public.

Did it work? Incredibly well. The campaign generated over 6 times the amount of donations of last year's campaign, and generated a fantastic ROI of 1.4 - essential to an organisation like UN Women UK.

But, that isn’t enough. UN Women are on a mission to end FGM by 2030, and today, on ‘International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation’ we stand with them.

You can donate to UN Women UK and help end FGM here.