Who are they? The custodians, bus drivers, food and service workers and other service staff at GWU who keep the university running behind-the-scenes but often go unrecognized.
We aim to change that. We are a group of students who co-founded Unsung Heroes GWU, a news & media organization that highlights the contributions of university service staff through visual story-telling. We share in depth interviews with these employees to emphasize the importance of their role in their community, advice to students, their dreams & ambitions, and lessons learned during their lifetime.
Once the community begins to acknowledge the employees that keep your campus running and connects with them through their stories that we share, they develop a sense of appreciation and want to give back to them for all of their contributions to our community.
That is why this holiday season we are launching our Thanks To #UnsungColonials campaign. Our goal is to introduce Unsung Heroes GWU as a priority organization to the community, to make service staff visible to students and faculty, to encourage students to say thanks to the service staff in their surroundings, to inspire the conversation about how we treat campus workers, and to jump start our long campaign to create a culture of recognition on campus.
Who are we teaming up with?
We hope to team up with President Thomas J. LeBlanc. One of his five pillars is to build a sense of community so together we are setting the tone about GWU's community in his inaugural holiday initiative. We hope he will endorse the campaign by either taking a photo with a whiteboard that says "I say thank you to #UnsungColonials because..." or a video message to express his endorsement and sending that out to his email list-serve and social media followers. His outreach is approximately 160,000 on Facebook and 44,000 on Twitter and not to mention the thousands more that are on the official GWU email list-serve.
We are teaming up with the Division of Operations since they employ the #UnsungColonials. They will help communicate our message to the service staff and faculty so that we gain legitimacy and access to interview the campus workers. Their outreach is up to 500 staff, 102 on Twitter.
We hope the Student Association will co-sponsor the campaign by taking part in the photo-collection campaign and encouraging students to join.
We hope to team up with Residence Hall Association because they are the team of students responsible for making GWU feel like home. During the campaign we hope the leaders will take part in the photo-collection campaign, amplify our message and encourage attendance to our events through their list-serve.
Who is our Target Audience?
Primarily we will target GW Undergraduates in the Class of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 through the official and unofficial facebook pages, physical flyers on campus, our presence at a few events, GWU social media and email list-serves. The maximum outreach will be 11,244 students.
We will reach out to all current GW Faculty and greater community through e-mail list serves, GW social media (44,000 Twitter, and 157,627 Facebook) and GW Today which amounts to 10,300 Twitter Followers.
What are the current approaches to student-worker relationships?
The only campaigns focused on the student-worker relationship have had a political focus. None have integrated campus workers into building community spirit. Neither has their been a holiday campaign focused on workers in the past several years. After speaking with President LeBlanc, representatives from the Student Association, and Division of Operations we know this is the first campaign of its kind.
What are the Campaign Deliverables?
The Thanks to #UnsungColonials campaign will share an AJ+ style video to introduce the concept of Unsung Heroes
7 posts introducing the Unsung Heroes GWU team and why they joined
4 posts introducing the first four #UnsungColonials
4 video interviews with service staff members who we call #UnsungColonials
The campaign will culminate with a 24-hour Holiday Event open to students, staff and faculty.
Week 1 is also dedicated to our photo campaign. December 4-6 we will post photos of student leaders in the Student Association, RHA, and other student organizations to encourage the student body to join the campaign by coming to our table in Kogan Plaza December 4-8. In person, we will briefly introduce Unsung Heroes GWU, invite them to thank service staff at GWU by finishing the sentence " I thank the #UnsungColonials because..." and posing for a photo with their quote written on a white board, then with their permission we will post the photo, tag them and two friends who they challenge to take the pledge. We will also take the opportunity to pass out stickers to those uncomfortable with taking a photo.
Blurb in Newsletters:
Welcome back from Thanksgiving Break! We at Unsung Heroes GWU are super thankful for the work done by the custodians, bus drivers, food and service workers and other service staff that keep the university running behind-the-scenes. We interviewed a few of these #UnsungColonials and shared their stories on our facebook page. They rarely get recognized for the work they do. Please join us this holiday season in pledging to say Thanks to #UnsungColonials.
Week 2 also is when we hold our two events for students and service staff to celebrate their contributions to the GW community.
Every year GW hosts a Midnight Breakfast the day before Final exams. In addition to free food students are given the opportunity to attend workshops organized by student clubs. Unsung Heroes GW will host a Thank You Card writing workshop in the basement of District House.
The Holiday event will offer food at three popular times: breakfast, lunch and dinner to allow for service staff at any shift to join. To whichever service staff that can make it, we will deliver the Thank You Cards made at Midnight Breakfast and distribute T-shirts with the Unsung Heroes logo. This is meant to be a time for the Unsung Heroes team at any GW student to celebrate the contributions made by #UnsungColonials so the TV will display a slideshow of all the campaign photos and pledges on a loop, and there will be a blow-up instagram cardboard cut out for the service staff to take photos with. Students are invited and will likely come to get a break from studying and to introduce themselves to the #UnsungColonials that they pledged to recognize.
Conclusion
By December 16, 2017we aim to have:
1) 4,000 Facebook followers on @UnsungHeroesGW 2) 30 White Board photos and 50 signed pledges 3) 4,000 mentions of #UnsungColonials on Facebook and Twitter. 4)2,000 views of each #UnsungColonial video interview 5) 4,000 views of President LeBlanc's endorsement.
If we accomplish this we will have reached the majority of GWU undergraduates and have gained a following that has taken other chapters 6 months to gain.
Unsung Heroes GW's work does not end here. This campaign was meant to launch our concept into the conciousness of the community. Our next endeavor is to inspire the community to give back to #UnsungColonials through primarily monetary donation for specific workers with a compelling story. Our hope is that this holiday campaign increases empathy, inspires connection so that the community is more willing to support campus workers in the future. For example, at Georgetown students raised $5,400 for a dining hall worker to travel back home to Sudan.
For the next 12 months we will continue to publish video interviews of hundreds of other campus workers. It is our vision that in the future students eventually take the initiative to get to know workers on a personal level and listen to their stories. Hopefully after that, we will contribute to a campus culture that demands everyone is respected no matter their socio-economic status.