ADD ONE FLOOD RELIEF
Usually when someone approaches you in a store or supermarket, holding brochures in his/her hand you immediately think:” Man, don’t even start trying to sell me anything!” But if you have been at Tops Supermarket at Central World between mid November and mid December 2011, you would have quickly come to realize that these young people did not belong to an anti-wrinkle sales platoon or trying to pitch to you the latest ultra whitening lotionbut instead were the heart of a flood relief campaign called ADD ONE that sells you the simple idea to add one item to your shopping basket to support flood victims.
Just as simple and yet as effective as the idea of wiping windshield was ADD ONE’s idea to add an item to one’s shopping basket and both went hand in hand to support our relief efforts, Wipe the Tide for long term relief, Add One for immediate relief. Our Wipe the Tide flood relief fund raiser was gaining momentum and expanded its network through word of mouth and social media. The more people got involved the more connections we got with other people involved in flood relief. It was an incredible time, with so many people helping out in a time of crisis. Boom and Alice from mysocialmotion introduced us to the Shannon, Anisha and Ming from BKK Clean Up and Operation November Rain. Those were non-formal groups of young and well-connected individuals who had set up an informal but well coordinated flood relief machinery consisting of different loose groups equipped with boats, trucks and even jet-skis, recon and research teams, connected among themselves and with people on the ground to carry out immediate flood relief missions. It was a superb example of the resourcefulness of citizen action and responsibilities were divided up according to one’s strength, expertise, resources and availability. We made a perfect match for them by taking on the role as the fundraiser, docking our Wipe the Tide campaign to their initiatives would give us the opportunity to go out to the front and document what was happening with the donations, thus our team members joined them on recon and supply missions.
After the first missions it dawned on us that given the scope of immediate flood relief it would sooner rather than later conflict with our goal of retaining the majority of funds for projects dealing with the aftermath of the flood. During the first mission alone we invested nearly 100,000THB and at the speed and range of missions taking place we would be unable to stick to our initial plan of supporting long term flood relief. We strongly believed that the aftermath will require even more funding since donations usually dry up at that stage. Hence an alternative plan had to be devised that would allow us to continue supply immediate flood relief yet help us retain funds for flood rehabilitation and prevention.
From that point on ADD ONE was born and some of our volunteers moved from the traffic clogged intersections of downtown Bangkok to the entrance of Tops Supermarket Central World one of Bangkok’s prime supermarkets. They were ready to connect supermarket customers to the cause, to flood supply chain by asking them to add one item to their shopping basket based on a supply list compiled by Ming, Shannon and Anisha. This type of fundraising campaign did not require much physical strength as was the case with the windshield wiping but you needed to talk like Eddy Murphy to get people understand that they could make a difference as they walked the isles of Tops. The idea that everybody could turn into the starting point of a highly effective supply chain thrilled us and after pitching the idea with all the charm available the response was usually very positive to the degree that instead of just one item several items were bought. ADD ONE was to become a highly effective relief campaign coming straight from the supermarket shelves, past our donation desk, through flood relief workers to those communities in need.
We linked up with our friends from the Duang Prateep Foundation to handle the distribution of the Add One supply bags, we had been on a flood relief mission with them before and knew that they possess the resources to continuously operate flood relief. Their staff picked up the goods, repacked them and delivered them, supporting a number of flood affected areas in the process. At this point we would like to thank again our volunteers, the cooperation of Tops Supermarket and Duang Prateep to make the ADD ONE campaign possible. It may have not caused such a stir as Wipe the Tide but it was nonetheless a powerful and fun campaign that connected all those awesome shoppers to the need of care and support. Many of the customers were great and responded well, leading to a lot of exchange between us and them.
A challenge however was to man the supermarket entrance. Since ADD ONE did not make it into the news, nor did it have a cool video to mobilize more manpower it often suffered from a chronic shortage of volunteers except on a number of days when we boasted an awesome platoon of newbies and Wipe the Tide core members that would easily mobilize shoppers for our cause filling up our stations with Grade A goods ready to be shipped to flood victims.
Looking back we’re glad to have added Add One to our campaigns and as with Wipe the Tide and Hugs for Thailand it has proven to be a highly potent way of supporting Thailand during a severe floods. If there’s another flood which we don’t hope we will immediately reactivate ADD ONE and we will need your help and we hope that you will add one of your friends to help us expand this campaign to other supermarket branches across Bangkok to create a powerful flood relief chain for those in need. If you’re local in Bangkok and you want to contribute with Add One (if need in the future) or with other flood and none-flood related campaigns then join our bangkokvanguards action group on Facebook.
