Todays guest post is from Ben Boudreau.
Ben Boudreau is a communicator at Halifax branding agency Revolve and maintains his creative side on his personal blog, No Ordinary Rollercoaster. He’s at his happiest when equipped with a laptop, latté and his puppies.
If you had suggested last year that a simple lyric from a novelty rap song would have been the catalyst behind the most exciting and inspiring work of my career to date, I would have laughed in your face. Not that I don’t appreciate the work of say…Sir Mix-A-Lot or the Fresh Prince, but they don’t immediately conjure up images of empowering communities.
Yet here I am…doing what I love to do, making a difference, floored by the power of an inspired community and constantly trying to get that Young MC one-hit-wonder out of my head.
Don’t just stand there…Bust a Move!
In the summer of 2009, I was tapped to work on launching a signature breast health fundraiser like no other. On January 30, 2010, up to 1,000 participants will raise a minimum of $1,000 each to complete six hours of consecutive fitness including dance, aerobics, Pilates, and one hour with the King of Short-Shorts himself, Richard Simmons.
This one-day event in Halifax, Nova Scotia will launch two attempts to break or set new Guinness World Records and every cent raised will help purchase new digital mammography equipment that will instantly increase Nova Scotia’s screening capacity by 75%.
The prize at stake here – 75% more women getting screened every. single. year. – is one too powerful to be ignored especially when you consider that Halifax currently has the worst wait times in the province for mammogram screenings – the only source of early detection that can improve a woman’s odds against breast cancer.
That being said, we couldn’t just show up, ask people to exercise for longer than your average marathon on top of spending weeks raising money, and then go out for job-well-done nachos. Far from it, actually. We needed to be sensitive of other fundraising initiatives, respectful of the many people who are so passionate about beating this disease, and let the community – on whom we are relying to make this event a success – define how we will get there.
You want it? You got it!
As we began genuinely reaching out to others for support and suggestions we found, more often than not, that people truly adopted this cause as their own. Dancers and choreographers met in secret to rehearse a flash mob dance; the Halifaxchicks – influential bloggers and Twitter users – entered a team and took Bust a Move to a whole new level online; avid fundraisers and volunteers rallied to ensure their involvement; local students got to work on developing promotional content.
Step by step, all the pieces fell into place for an incredible launch week that saw over 100 participants and 100 volunteers registered, 300 new members to our Facebook group, over 500 mentions on Twitter. Not to mention that in the 48 final hours, we gained over 20,000 views of our flash mob.
While the numbers are all lovely, the best part of this experience is getting to watch communities come together to create a genuine movement that will benefit us all. We still have a way to go before the big day but those days are already booking up with pancake breakfasts, bake sales, gift-wrapping services and many more fundraisers in support of better breast health services in Nova Scotia. We couldn’t be more thrilled.
Now if we could only stop jamming to that song…at least while out in public….
http://youtube.com/bustamovehfx
