In this episode of Stories of Change, we sit down with Pragya Vats, a seasoned campaigner and communication specialist to explore the art and strategy behind crafting powerful nonprofit campaigns.
Pragya shares her insights on building narratives that inspire action, harnessing the power of storytelling for social impact and mobilising communities and building partnerships for lasting change. Whether you’re a nonprofit professional, a creative enthusiast, or someone passionate about social causes, this episode is packed with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you take your campaigns to the next level.
Transcript
Simit: So thank you so much, Pragya, for agreeing to be on this podcast. It’s really a pleasure to have you.
Pragya: No, thank you for inviting me, and it’s a great privilege of mine, I would say, to be speaking with you today. Thanks a lot.
Simit: Absolutely. Thank you. So you have been in the social development space and in the communications space for over a decade—more than 15 years now, I think. One of the things that kind of stood out for me is your dabbling into different kinds of mediums, whether it is theatre, a book, or leveraging social media, for example. Could you share a little bit about your journey, the campaign’s journey, and how you have been able to leverage that or work on that across different organisations?
Pragya: So, I mean, I think one of the things that I learned, which probably comes from greed, is that you could do a little more with that initiative. So I’ll walk you through some of the interesting products that came about through my campaigning experience with Save the Children in particular. We had a project with Magnum photographers around the world, which was a research project, and Raghu Rai, who we all know is a legend, happened to be from India and a part of that project.
I thought, since we had got him associated with the project—which was a global project—this had more potential. This can’t just be left at the research level. So I met with him and said, “How about converting this into a photo book, for instance?” It was about child survival. The agenda was maternal mortality and child mortality—a very morbid subject, so to speak.
We had a series of conversations, and Raghu, being an optimist, said, “I’ve never shot poverty. So I would not do it. First, I will walk the slums in Delhi and see.” Then he met this one girl called Sangeeta—I still remember her name—who was a community health volunteer. Raghu met her and said, “I’ve got my story.” For him, it would be the positives that this issue has in terms of what can solve the issue.
So, it came out in a portable kit and was put together in an exhibition. It’s just about one idea and how it can diversify into multiples. That was a lesson there. But we were also dealing with an issue that no one cares about because it’s not happening in our vicinity, in our lives, or in the lives of people we know—children dying due to poverty or easily preventable causes.
These causes, so to speak, are diarrhoea, pneumonia, and birth-related complications. We don’t hear of these in our circles. So it was a difficult agenda to put forth to get public support. I remember another project. This was an idea. In the UK, Sarah Brown had done a book on motherhood. I thought this could be spun into the Indian context in a different and creative way.
I met Sanjoy, who does the Jaipur Lit Fest, and I said, “You know, this is an idea, and I need to connect with an author.” He put me onto Jaishree Mishra, and I pitched the idea: “How about doing an anthology on motherhood?” She was excited by the idea. Then we met Zubaan.
So you see how the connections kept building, with different people bringing in different ingredients to the final product. Zubaan was equally excited, saying, “We had an idea like that, but it never took off. This is a brilliant opportunity.” We had Jaishree. The final product, Simit, was this anthology called Mothers and Others. We thought, “Okay, now we have a book. What do we do with this?”
We had to make it a really big asset—not just limited to the NGO sector but also reaching the reading population. What better platform than the Jaipur Lit Fest to launch it? This anthology had 21 writers, which Jaishree brought together, with fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. These were people like Manju Kapoor and Urvashi Butalia herself. All of them contributed to this book. We launched it at the Jaipur Lit Fest, and within hours of the launch, it became one of the Top 13 Must-Reads for Forbes India.
Then there was the play we did. I thought, “Okay, how do you really invigorate an audience to sit up and think about it?” The relatability of the issue. Because all that we were trying to do with these products was to build that relatability.
The audience should say, “I care because this is happening somewhere.” The play was called I Will Not Cry, and it was a solo play. We again got Lushin Dubey and Arvind Gaur to do this solo, where she performed 13 characters. The idea was to jolt your audience into believing there is a solution but also believing that there is an issue that needs our attention.
We also did campaigns on another element. These were products. But I also feel that partnerships, for instance, are extremely critical. All of these examples, even when we brought out a product for the audience to absorb, were about connecting the dots with people who came together to make it possible. I am a firm believer in the power of partnerships—the power of partnerships to amplify the effect of any issue or element you take on. Partnership is extremely critical.
I am a firm believer in the power of partnerships—the power of partnerships to amplify the effect of any issue or element you take on.
I would say it’s also very innate to human existence. It’s a reminder that an idea strikes only because people come together to make it happen and amplify it. So yes, these are a few examples I reminisce about and look back upon, feeling privileged to have worked with all these people.
Simit: Absolutely. And one of the things I find interesting is that these are all very, very different mediums from one another, right? One is a book, and one is theatre. My question to you is, while working on a campaign, for example, or on a particular issue, how do you decide what medium to use?
Simit: What does that process look like? Could you shed some light on that?
Pragya: I would say that the premise of any campaign is about identifying the problem you are trying to solve. Right. And when you disaggregate that, the next question is, “Who do you want to reach?” So probably the medium you choose would depend on who you are targeting. If I were to work with an urban audience, I would have to craft a campaign that resonates with them.
The premise of any campaign is about identifying the problem you are trying to solve.
For example, let me illustrate. We launched this campaign on Girl City. We had a report that talked about the perception of safety for women in public places, launched by Save the Children. Now, it’s a fact-based research product, so to speak, with some really great materials that could speak to an audience. But how many of us would really read a report done by an NGO?
Not many. So there was one data point that spoke to me, oh well, I mean, at a very personal level, which was how six out of ten women face the fear of violence and harassment when they go out in a public place. So when I thought about that one data point, it made me realise that a woman, irrespective of where she is, or a young girl, whether it’s in a village in Bihar or in a city like Delhi or Mumbai, that fear of violence and harassment when we are going out alone is very real and palpable, and only women understand.
It cuts across strata, geography, and all other barriers that unify women. But in a very odd sense, or in a very disadvantageous sense, that fear is palpable for all of us. And we also knew of an incident where Jyoti Singh faced that gruesome incident in 2016, which also happened because it was an unlit area.
So we did a campaign called Light Up Her Life, which was all about how to light up the dark areas around the country so that women and young girls feel safe. And why was that important? Because if a girl has to go to school, she drops out for fear of violence. The moment she hits puberty, parents say, “Oh, now I am scared for her.”
So the best thing is to keep her at home. Or if I am driving somewhere, I would ensure that I send my location to someone I know. So lighting up could actually transform a lot of realities for women and girls in the country. And we actually launched that campaign and a petition alongside it. And we have often heard Jyoti Singh’s mother talk about the incident.
We received a moving letter from her father, which became a part of the Change.org campaign that we were running, with 150,000 people signing up for the petition, asking for cities to be lit up. So these are, you know, examples where any idea has to speak to us personally. And once we make it personal, like I was saying, unless it’s personal, it doesn’t really resonate with the audience.
So that was the campaign Light Up Her Life. Again, we found 26 organisations to come on board. We had a film, we had a campaign, and it provided an opportunity for the public to voice their concerns and register their actions. We had a partnership; we partnered with YUVA. Again, I’ll go back to my previous response: partnership is extremely critical. You have to find whether it’s the public as a large, amorphous audience, or individuals who will come together to put in their best.
That’s when you determine what the possibilities are. The possibilities become manifold when ideators and believers come together. And that’s my learning from my experience in the NGO sector or the campaigning or communication space—you determine a product or a tactic based on the audience you’re trying to reach and the desired end action. It’s not just about creating a beautiful, creative campaign but essentially linking it with the solutions you aspire for. So, this is the sum total of what I said: identify the problem you’re trying to tackle, focus on the solutions while campaigning, and not just talk about the problems.
It’s not just about creating a beautiful, creative campaign but essentially linking it with the solutions you aspire for.
Simit: There are a lot of things that you mentioned which, I thought, need a little unpacking. There are so many questions I want to ask, and I’m wondering where to start. But one of the things you mentioned was about partnerships—how do you build the right connections?
How do you build partnerships with other like-minded organisations and get them all to work on a specific cause? And at the same time, towards the end, you also mentioned how organisations need to plan these campaigns. One associated question is, when you run campaigns, how do you then look at the impact of that campaign? What are the kinds of metrics that you look at when you’re designing a campaign?
Pragya: So, the metrics could range from simple to complex and long-term. And when we determine—again, another step, and this is moving very theologically—the next step in a campaign is to identify what your wins are going to be: immediate, mid-term, and long-term. It could range from people liking and sharing your post, to real people coming out and taking action.
It can culminate in a policy decision taken by the government that impacts the issue you’re working on. Again, if I could illustrate this with examples. So, we were running this campaign on street-connected children, and our first collaborator here really was Youth Ki Awaaz, run by Anshul Tiwari. The idea was that street-connected children are mostly invisible.
We often talk about or call them Ramu or Chotu, rarely by their real names. You know, and that in a way—if I call you Samrat instead of Simit, you will correct me. But if you look at these people who do not have an identity, so to speak, and who are largely marginalised and invisible, we don’t even care.
We often talk about or call them Ramu or Chotu, rarely by their real names.
We just assume a name for them. So that’s where it started, that India had 2 million children living on the streets. Okay, what is the solution? They are not counted even in the census because they’re a moving population. Right? Because they are not counted in the census, they’re not a part of the population segment, so to speak. When they’re not a part of that population segment, it means they’re denied even basic rights.
They don’t have access to school or healthcare. So, this was the larger issue that we were trying to tackle. We backed it with data that we had. We brought out research. The second step in that was really to collaborate with a government body because we could run the campaign for all we care about, but unless and until you find collaborators — and the collaborator here really was the government, apart from the people and evidence, real young people.
And something very interesting came about in that campaign: we wanted to tell the story through the lens of young people who have lived that reality, rather than just me talking about data and sharing it with you. It’s a grave issue in our country. We wanted to bring forth who these young people are. So somewhere, it was also driving home the point that, you know, it’s important to be optimistic.
Campaigners have to be optimistic. And when you see these real people showing that optimism, you begin to believe in it even more. And I think that’s where you see it all began with an idea, a report to give identity, which we found as a problem. So yes, it’s very important to find your end goals and also celebrate your mini — you know, what are called mini wins as well. And micro wins, while keeping the macro picture in mind.
Campaigners have to be optimistic. And when you see these real people showing that optimism, you begin to believe in it even more.
Simit: Yeah. Wow. So, you mentioned it started with the report and then something struck you — that data point kind of struck you — and then you went deeper, doing case studies and looking at those stories as well. I realise this is a rare skill set to have, especially within an organisation, because typically when you’re working on a particular issue, you get so engrossed in it that you don’t realise you need someone who can look at it from a neutral point of view.
Someone who can look at the larger picture and then put that into context. I think a lot of organisations fall into that trap. They get so engrossed in a particular issue that they are not able to see these stories or the data points. While the data points are there, a lot of the time it’s just so packed with information that it becomes almost impossible for a layperson, or for the general audience, to take that and understand that it’s a very important issue because there’s just so much information packed into a report.
Right, so how does an organisation build onto those skill sets? How do they cultivate those skill sets within the communications team or the people involved in storytelling or communications within an organisation?
Pragya: There are two ways to answer this, really. One is recognising that communication is as important as running your programmes on the ground. You may run a fantastic programme on the ground, but it’s equally important to tell that story to the world, to show what that programme is doing. So, at the principal level, the recognition that each part of the work spectrum in an organisation is as important as the other.
Second, how do you invest and build a team? Investment in the communication function is essential. However, in many organisations, it’s often seen as ancillary. But I’ve also seen a shift where communications, media, and campaigning are increasingly recognised.
Especially at Save the Children, campaigning was integral. Save the Children was founded in 1919 by a woman called Eglantyne Jebb, who single-handedly campaigned for children affected by war, irrespective of which side they belonged to. She would say that children know no sides, and the cry of a child is the only cry that matters.
From there, it grew into an organisation across 200 countries around the world — a movement. Save the Children, in its genesis and ethos, was a movement set up by a campaigner. So that spirit of campaigning ran in the organisation’s DNA.
Save the Children, in its genesis and ethos, was a movement set up by a campaigner.
Pragya: Even through the years, it was carried into everything we did, irrespective of the changing landscape of campaigning. But I feel that Save the Children always recognised the importance of campaigning for children. That was the reason for its existence — to ensure children around the world are protected, have access to education, and all the opportunities they need to thrive.
So, I think it also was a part of like we had a team which was a campaigns team and a different social media team we had. We also had a media relations and media and communications team. So, at a principal level, it was a given. But also investment that we make not just in human resources but also a part of your project should be allocated project funding should be allocated to delivering communication campaigns for organisations to tell the story not just of what you’re doing, but also of the people that you’re trying to benefit or people you’re trying to uplift or the rights of people you are standing up for or fighting for.
Pragya: So, I think these are the very two essential elements that are at a principal level and then effectively translating that into investing in communications. And that should reflect across its different vertical so to speak, so a very tactical answer to your response that it’s important to recognise that communication and campaigning is integral to the good work that people are doing. Third element if I may add as an afterthought is, you know, somewhere there has to be a shift from social work to social impact, you know, and that shift is already happening when you look at something as an impact, you would also want to communicate and share that impact. So, I think that shift can be rightly captured. If you deliver your programme well, you communicate your programme well in a professional manner, whatever medium you choose. But that’s very, very critical.
Simit: Absolutely. And I also see that, you know, the ability of organisations to raise resources in to raise funding is also directly correlated with their ability to tell their story impactfully right like I see that organisations that are really good at communication are also the ones who are able to leverage that and, you know, build fundraising, you know, because they are all interconnected. But I think a large segment of organisations are still to kind of get there because I think if I think from an organisation’s point of view, it’s almost like a chicken and egg kind of a situation, right?
The ability of organisations to raise resources in to raise funding is also directly correlated with their ability to tell their story impactfully.
That most organisations complain that they don’t have the resources to invest into communications. So whatever resources are there goes into the programmes, and you know, whatever little is left gets kind of diverted or gets allocated to the communications function. And also, one of the challenges that organisations face is also that donors want to support more of the programmatic activities rather than the communication kind of activities.
So in your experience, how have you been able to and as an organisation, how did that kind of, you know, happen where like so much focus went on communications and organisations looked at that and thought that this is not just a support function, but it is also one of the core things that we do.
Pragya: Right, so here I would share a few examples flowing from my previous response by recognising communication and campaigning as an integral function. So, the first example I would begin with is from action ‘A’ where we were talking about droughts in Bundelkhand. So, we got a seasoned journalist to travel to the area and come out with an, you know, like an assessment report of sorts, which was then launched to the media.
So one is that visualising a story but also requiring a consistent effort. And that report that we brought out and we released in Lucknow Press Club got the attention of NHRC, National Human Rights Commission, and NHRC took cognisance of that and sent their own fact-finding team to Bundelkhand.
So, while you have a lot of sophisticated ways of communicating but there are also traditional ways of communication that still work from Save the Children, I would again like to share two extreme realities. When we had grants of funding available from global sources to run purely advocacy and campaigning initiatives, which was by Gates Foundation, and it was on a child survival agenda.
So, while you have a lot of sophisticated ways of communicating but there are also traditional ways of communication.
So many of the examples that I shared we were able to do whether it was Leadership Summit with the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh at that point in time in 2014, which is exactly and then collaborating with different partners. We were able to do that purely because we had a large fund available. And the underlying point is not just the large funds, but a project or a grant which was meant for advocacy and campaigning and communications.
So, the fund also flows where the impact is, right, so whether you do an ad campaign with it, whether you do a public-facing campaign, it requires a full spectrum. It cannot be seen only as an adjunct to the larger agenda. So we were fortunate that we had a grant which focussed on helping us magnify and amplify the agenda of child mortality or rather child survival in the public domain using different tactics, whether it was communications films doing leadership, summits of large scale to activate, and the whole agenda was activating.
Pragya: The political will. Cut to pandemic when everything went online. And a lesson that I learnt early on when I was working with Kamla and Jagori was that again partnerships, you know, like you don’t often need large amounts of money, you need the right skill set and I’m not in any way sort of dumbing the idea that funds are not important.
But I’m saying that even in a crisis we could do things innovatively by bringing in people. You need certain skills and in today’s day and age, we all use a mobile phone. Your journalism has moved to Mojo so why not NGO also espousing certain tools and techniques where you can empower, whether it’s your field staff to take good pictures.
Even in a crisis we could do things innovatively by bringing in people.
But of course, there are briefs that you could create. But at the same time, how do we leverage what’s available now and with us in that transition to Digital India to be able to tell that story that needs to be told in a professional manner. So, it’s very important to recognise who you collaborate with, who you can bring on board, how can you leverage technology in a much more effective fashion and move away from the traditional while you use traditional, which is your media.
You use your tools and gadgets like your mobile phone and train your people who are reaching the last mile and who are closest to the subject. Because I think the pandemic also broke the barrier between organisations and people. So, we were consuming a lot of raw footage emerging from wherever people were taking it on their phones. So, in a way that also somewhere struck a chord that, you know, while it’s good to have sophisticated products, but it’s also important for us to see what’s real.
Simit: Absolutely. And I think what COVID has also taught us is to look at things in a very, very different perspective right now. Like there so many people in my team work remotely. And it’s something that probably I don’t think I would have maybe imagined that possible if maybe for a shorter period of time, sure, But one of my earlier colleagues, she worked almost for two years from Seoul in Korea, and I don’t think that would have, you know, that thought would have also come like.
Because we were so used to working in the same space, COVID made us realise that working remotely is entirely possible. It’s amazing to see how things can still get done even when we aren’t physically together.
Pragya: Exactly. It opened up new possibilities. We didn’t realise how much could be achieved through remote work and digital platforms.
Simit: Absolutely. You’ve beautifully highlighted the shift from physical campaigns to the digital space. I’d love to hear your experience with this transition. What’s worked well for you in terms of using social media for campaigns? Do you have any insights or tips to share?
Pragya: Rather than just offering tips, I’d say that we all need to see ourselves as brand ambassadors for the causes we represent. Consistency is key. I began using Twitter in 2009, just to share what our campaigns were doing. Little did I know that it would become such a vital platform for communicating our story. Over time, platforms like Twitter evolved, and I learned how to use these tools, like Thunderclap, to amplify our impact.
Simit: So, it’s about being consistent and building your platform, correct?
Pragya: Yes, exactly. It’s about telling the story every day. Consistency is vital, and as your work grows, so will your platform. You should also identify the right ambassador for your cause. This could be a public figure who aligns with your mission. For instance, Dia Mirza helped amplify our work on street-connected children. When a well-known person speaks out, it expands the reach and makes a bigger impact.
You should also identify the right ambassador for your cause. This could be a public figure who aligns with your mission.
Simit: That makes sense. Amplification is so important. So, would you say campaigns should also blend different mediums—social media, offline events, etc.?
Pragya: Yes! A 360-degree approach works best. Combine online and offline tactics. Use social media to spread the message, but don’t forget the power of real-life conversations or events. We saw how Instagram lives and virtual panels became powerful during the pandemic. Bringing people together—whether they’re political leaders, public figures, or those directly impacted by the issue—is key. The organization acts as a mediator and convenor of these conversations.
Simit: Great insights! It’s clear that effective campaigns require consistency, partnerships, and a blend of different mediums. Thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Pragya: Thank you! I really enjoyed how the conversation flowed, not just as a Q&A, but as a dialogue that built on each point.
Simit: Thanks again. It’s been a pleasure.
