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1100 Kilometres for 1100 Therapies fundraising event

About the client

1100 kilometres for 1100 therapies is a fundraising event carried out from March to the end of May 2021 by Ranko Dragičević and Daniel Lončar, philanthropists and mountaineering enthusiasts from Brač. The two adventurers organized this commendable initiative in order to ensure the operating stability of the Association of Parents with Children with Disabilities Brački pupoljci. The Association annually provides an average of 3,200 free hours of therapy for almost 70 children with disabilities on the island of Brač. In 2019, with the help of our expert team at CTA komunikacije, successfully changed the Law on Liner Shipping and Occasional Coastal Maritime Traffic to help its users. A speech therapist, physical therapist, sensory therapist, orthopedic educator and psychologist are available to children of this Association entirely free of charge. However, to keep the necessary therapies available and free, it is necessary to continuously ensure stable funding for the Association.

Challenge

In order to metaphorically experience all the stages that parents of children with disabilities go through and to finally raise funds for the much-needed therapy of the Island of Brač children, the mountaineers decided to walk the entire Via Adriatica route stretching from the Cape Kamenjak in Istria to the Cape Oštra in the very south of Croatia. It is a unique hiking trail that combines natural and cultural specifics of the Adriatic climate, consisting of 14 mountains, 12 rivers, 2 lakes, 18 protected areas, 7 counties, 52 municipalities and a total of 1100 kilometres. Since the cost of one hour of therapy is a HRK 100,00 on average, the action sought to raise a total of 110,000 HRK, or 100 HRK per kilometre. Any person of good will was able to sponsor the miles thus joining the hikers on their route or simply donate any amount and support the action. The task of the CTA komunikacije team was to ensure media coverage of this fundraising event, encouraging as many people as possible to get involved and donate money for children’s therapies to achieve the set goal and ultimately sensitize the public to this important social topic. Since it relied on a purely organic reach, the goal of the media campaign was to generate at least two posts per day from the route, a total of about 100 posts.

Solution

The official start of the media campaign was on March 19, 2021, and the two adventurers set off on their trip on Saturday, March 20, 2021, at 8:00 am from the point Bunker Kamenjak on Premantura and reached the final destination in Prevlaka on May 7, 2021. Each stage was announced with a media advisory and accompanied by a statement for regional and national media on the progress of the mountaineers. Press releases were shaped by a narrative made possible by  Brački pupoljci themselves. Namely, each stage of the action had a specific metaphorical meaning. Thus, the first section represented the confrontation of parents with the diagnosis of their child, while the last one was the goal of the Association – the opening of the Juraj Bonači Education Centre on Brač.

Since this is an exclusively socially responsible project, cooperation was established with several national and local media and journalists who followed the action from the very beginning to the end. As the campaign originated from Brač, special attention was paid to the Brač and Split media, such as Dalmatinski portal, which reported more comprehensively and more often on the fundraising event 1100 Kilometres for 1100 Therapies. In addition, press releases were accompanied by videos with impressions of each stage, as well as links to interesting facts of the event from the social networks, such as high snow on Velebit or fresh bear footprints found along the way. In addition, the event was promoted almost daily on the Facebook page of Brački pupoljci to further increase its exclusively organic reach.

In total, the 49-day campaign generated over 160 publications in the media, 151 of which were on national, regional and local Internet portals. As far as television shows are concerned, it should be pointed out that several reports were made about the event for the central daily news of RTL television, RTL Danas, the show Dobro jutro, Hrvatska and the Regional daily news of HRT. The goal of the action was exceeded and a total of 169,800 HRK was collected, thanks to which the Association will provide almost 1,700 therapies for children with disabilities.

In 2022, 1100 Kilometres for 1100 Therapies received the world’s most valuable PR prize, the Golden World Awards for Excellence by the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) as well as the Grand PRix Awards of the Croatian Public Relations Association (HUOJ).

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