Training Rays of Social Media

- October 20, 2022

The NGO Rays of Hope Centre (where I'm volunteering) has an Instagram and Facebook account, but they don't have a constant person to take care of these two.

For NGOs, the presence in Social Media can be profitable since these platforms help to share their message, engage with the community, raise awareness, and find new supporters for free. But Instagram and Facebook are like pets - they need constant care.

Currently, I'm the person who's taking care of the accounts. But to keep the channels up to date in the future, we decided to train five staff members who would take over weekly posting after the end of my deployment.

Let's get down to training!

The training was a one-day event. First, we went over the statistics about different social media apps. Did you know that there's a new trending app called BeReal?

Second, we discussed what to post on NGO pages and stopped more on ethics about sharing photos of children. The topic is complicated since Rays of Hope's work is about helping children. Before the children join the program, their parents or guardians sign a consent which gives the NGO the right to share photos. But the question is - even if the NGO has the right to share children's photos - is it eligible enough to protect children online and where do you draw the line, when the photo is used for a good cause or it harms the person?

For drawing a line in our training we agreed with the way Unicef has settled it in their Ethical Guidelines for Reporting a Child. It states:

Reporting is accepted, "When a child is engaged in a psychosocial programme and claiming their name and identity is part of their healthy development."

Photos and articles can raise awareness of beneficiaries' needs, and help raise funds for a good cause.

Rule of Thirds

In the second part of the training, participants received tips on how to make appealing content, especially visuals. The most intriguing fact was probably the Rule of Thirds. Have you ever wondered, what are these grid lines on your phone? When you position your subject on the left or right line or horizon on the bottom or upper line, then the composition of your image will become more open and appealing to the viewer.

Here's a photo of me in training that follows the Rule of Thirds. I think it looks quite good!

At the end of the training, everyone received a practical assignment, in which they needed to create a post about the new buildings Rays of Hope Centre has in Ayikuma. Here are three versions of it. Which one of these would you give a "thumbs up" and a "heart"?

Post 1

Text: We are so happy to announce that the doors of the new "prep building" have finally opened. Now there are three new class rooms and one computer room where the classes can take place.

Post 2

Text: Finally the new buildings at WEM Center are finished so that the staff, beneficiaries, and new volunteers can use them for studying, teaching and living. We are looking forward to finding out what else we could use the buildings for this year.