This week I lived out a lifelong dream of speaking before the United Nations! I was honored to deliver a statement on behalf of HelpMeSee to the 50th Commission on Population and Development.
In April 2017, I was honored to deliver a statement on behalf of HelpMeSee to the 50th Commission on Population and Development. Lean more at: http://www.matthewhurst.com/2017/04/speaking-at-the-united-nations/
As part of my role managing communications and content marketing at HelpMeSee, I often write speeches/statements and build presentations for our leadership. Late last year I took on responsibility for managing our global NGO’s membership with the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), participating in membership events and submitting HelpMeSee’s initiatives in support of the UN’s agenda to support public health and sustainable development. I was thrilled when our submissions were approved, so when our CEO was unavailable to speak I was nervous but excited to present our statement before the the committee at the UN’s headquarters in NYC.
To read the full transcript of the speech and statement, please visit HelpMeSee’s website.
Today is World Sight Day, a global holiday established by the UN’s World Health Organization to raise awareness about eye health and bring attention to blindness and eye health. To celebrate, today HelpMeSee submitted over 12,000 signatures to our petition calling on the United Nations to support an increase of training for cataract specialists needed to treat the millions of cataract blind around the world.
According to the WHO at least 20 million people are blinded by cataracts, despite the fact that sight can be restored by a low-cost surgical treatment, mostly due to poor access to health care in developing countries. Earlier this year I took on a new role as Content Marketing Manager with HelpMeSee to tackle this growing global health issue, including helping raise awareness and activism through this petition.
As part of my new role, I was asked to help represent HelpMeSee at the UN, using our NGO’s special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council. Then we decided to combine our UN advocacy with another common marketing goal: growing our list of supporters (and maybe leads as future donors) for email marketing outreach. So we partnered with Care2, a leading social network for philanthropy and activism, to share our UN petition with their growing audience.
Bringing it all together was our marketing funnel: we built a series of landing pages to share the petition, designed to convert interested advocates into active petition signers who would join our email database. At the top of that funnel we utilized our Google Ad Grant, available to any non-profit to looking use AdWords’ search engine marketing tools, to introduce thousands more to our cause through relevant search ads driving to the petition. This campaign worked in tandem with Care2’s support, adding 29% more signatures above our 10k goal! Along the way I learned more about tools like Unbounce and MailChimp then I ever thought possible, and HelpMeSee qualified to Google Ad Grants Pro (4x the total funding) by optimizing search ad spending to 99% efficiency for consecutive months.
I’m proud of the awareness we raised and support we’re building towards a critical public health challenge, and now I’m looking forward to delivering the thousands of signatures we gathered to the UN! But it’s not too late to add your name to the list- you can read the full petition and sign today here:
More than 20 million people are needlessly blind due to untreated cataracts. Tell the UN: I support training of cataract specialists in the developing world. (11947 signatures on petition)
I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining the HelpMeSee as a Social Media Coordinator beginning next week! In this new role I’ll be managing social media with daily updates and engagements to support fundraising for this global health care non-profit organization.
Founded in 2010, HelpMeSee is a global campaign to end cataract blindness, which is the leading cause of preventable blindness worldwide. Over 20 million people are needlessly blind because of cataracts, and a further 82 million who are visually impaired will eventually go blind because they cannot access treatment. Cataracts can effect people of any age, race, or background, with women disproportionately impacted and less likely to be treated. Most of the cataract blind live in developing countries, where there is a shortage of cataract surgeons trained to provide sight restoring treatment for the millions of people in need.
