Report: ON GROUND MOBILISATION FOR RED RIBBON EXPRESS 2012

Street Play

OBJECTIVE

MDACS took a four-pronged approach to mobilize the crowds to visit the Red Ribbon Express that was stationed in Mumbai on March 14 & 15, 2012. These activities were planned well in advance and set off about a week before the train arrived at CST.



I RED RIBBON CLUBS 

Meetings were conducted with the Red Ribbon Club members were they were instructed on the ways to mobilize the public to come and view the Red Ribbon Express. MDACS had created special banners for the event and these were distributed to the RRCs. They, in turn, had the banners displayed at strategic points within the colleges, where students tend to gather the most. Volunteers also went from class to class to inform the students about the arrival of the Red Ribbon Express at CST, thus managing mobilize maximum footfalls at the event.

MDACS has 150 Red Ribbon Clubs functional in the city. Each of these RRCs organized mobilization meets and spread the word about the RRE in their respective colleges. The total number of students touched through this activity was 25,700 students.

NGO Stall

II NGO STALLS

Six NGOs tied up with MDACS. After clever planning, they set up stalls at local railway stations all around Mumbai for about a week before the event started. The stalls caught the eye of the commuters, ensuring that they got to know about the arrival of the Red Ribbon Express at CST on March 14 & 15, 2012.

Considering that a huge percentage of Mumbai’s population travel by the local train, this was a perfect strategy as it brought information to that many number of Mumbaikars before the event. The NGOs also distributed RRE related IEC materials to the commuters.

III HUMAN TRAIN

Six Partner NGOs conducted flash mobs and formed human trains at key railway stations across the city spreading the news about the arrival of the Red Ribbon Express at CST on March 14 & 15, 2012.

Human Train - Volunteers, Public & School Children. Note them holding the RRE Banner

Six groups of 50 volunteers each would assemble suddenly on a railway platform, form a human train and move around the platform for a brief time, with the front runners holding the Red Ribbon Express banner, announcing the arrival of the train and then disperse.

The best part of the show was that half the volunteers were in RRE t-shirt while the other half wore civil clothes. This gave the impression that the general public was also part of the human train. This increased the comfort level of the commuters to take part in the build up to the main event.

IV STREET PLAYS

Street Play is a very impressive medium when it comes to mobilizing crowds. Street plays were performed across the many local railway stations over a week prior to the main event at CST. This was to ensure that the maximum number of people got to know about the arrival of the Red Ribbon Express at CST on March 14 & 15, 2012.

A volunteer giving a RRE pamphlet to a rickshaw driver

A total of 146 street plays were conducted across 35 railway stations in the city covering all three railway routes, i.e. Western, Central and Harbour lines. Apart from disseminating basic information about HIV/AIDS transmission, prevention and services, troupes announced the arrival of the Red Ribbon Express and the features of the coaches especially counselling and testing services provided on the coach. The total number of audience reached through the street plays was 11,170.

Every performance had troupe members holding up a RRE Banner that had all the information about the forthcoming event. Troupe members also distributed IEC materials about the arrival of the RRE.

Colourful costumes along with loud music managed to attract the attention of the rushing commuters. Most of them stopped to check out the scene and got to know about the upcoming event. This was a surefire successful way to catch eyeballs.

These cards with information on the arrival of RRE and the train timings at CST were
distributed to commuters prior to the event

IMPACT

All the planning and hard work paid off when the Red Ribbon Express actually arrived at CST. There were long queues of people from different strata of society who were keen to see what the train had to offer. The flow of crowd was steady throughout the two days of the event and there were 10,225 people in all who visited the engine in just two days.