Flip cam videos of Somali crisis help raise more than $1 million for nonprofit

Mindy Mizell, World Vision media relations director, was sent to the Horn of Africa as a communicator representing World Vision’s emergency response team to the drought and famine crisis. She traveled throughout the region from July to September, only carrying a laptop, a lavaliere microphone, and a hand-held Flip camera.

For this intrepid communications idea, we award World Vision with top honors in the Best Location-Based Campaign category of PR Daily’s Digital PR & Social Media Awards.

Even though her communications equipment was limited, Mizell was able to launch new and innovative social media sites for World Vision’s response team to tell untold stories about Somali refugees.

“What I didn’t expect to learn was that social media sites let me tell the ‘raw’ stories in nearly real time straight from the front lines of the crisis in a way that our staff learned what Somali children really had to say about the harsh realities of the crisis, without the spin or bias of marketing,” Mizell says.

Mizell explains how social media provided a voice for the voiceless: