Tearing Down The Wall: Missing Link helps kids fight tobacco displays

One of Missing Link’s highlights of 2008 is the Tear Down The Wall project we did in August. Supported by Partnership Health Canterbury, our job was to enable a group of 9–12 year old students at Christchurch’s Discovery 1 School to campaign against retail tobacco displays in New Zealand.

Retail tobacco displays, known in the industry as 'Powerwalls', are targeted at children who see them on a daily basis in shops and supermarkets. Discovery 1 student Taiesha succinctly sums up the issue: "I don’t like shopkeepers advertising cigarettes to kids."

Social issues around tobacco and smoking are wide-ranging, and for our project to succeed we recognized the need to focus on the single issue of Powerwall advertising and not to get sidetracked into health-related topics like lung cancer. Ours was not an anti-smoking campaign, it was a campaign against tobacco advertising. We took the time to clearly define our goal:

To get the attention of MPs and lobby for a ban on Powerwalls

Having a well-articulated goal underpinning any project is a simple yet incredibly powerful strategy. As a project progresses all of its activities, ideas and opportunities can be held up against its stated goal and evaluated; anything that does not serve the goal is set aside.

As we worked with the schoolchildren we used this clarity of focus to stop our project from trying to go in too many directions at once with multiple messages. We helped the kids build a website, create a YouTube video and stage a media event. Each component was focused on the issue of Powerwall advertising.

For the media event we planned to build a 31m2 wall in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square representing 1/200th of the total size of all Powerwalls in New Zealand. Our wall would demonstrate the physical size of the issue while also being visually compelling to entice the media.

Some of the kids wanted to focus on door-knocking and sending out flyers to the public to advertise the event. While not inherently a bad idea, when it was evaluated against our goal of getting the attention of MPs we knew that politicians were our first priority, and public attendance was a bonus. Instead of spending time on public flyers we sent letters to every Member of Parliament contacting MPs’ offices inviting them to attend.

And attend they did. Sue Kedgley, Green Party List MP and Chairperson of the Parliament Health Select Committee; Jim Anderton, Progressive MP for Wigram; Tim Barnett, Labour MP for Christchurch Central and Brendon Burns, Labour standing candidate (now elected) for Christchurch Central all made time in their schedules to come along.

The MPs gave speeches, the students gave speeches, and then the students tore down the front layer of the wall to reveal a hidden message behind. Missing Link’s Director Kaila Colbin has a favorite saying: "You can’t chase dark with dark, you have to chase dark with light", meaning that in order to get rid of something negative, you need to replace it with something positive. It was with this in mind that the kids had painted the ‘reveal’ layer of the wall with their own positive suggestions of what retailers could use to replace Powerwalls. This wasn’t just a campaign against something bad, it was a campaign for something better.

So how did our results stack up against the goal of the project?

Clearly, we were 100% successful in getting the attention of MPs. They got directly involved in our event and we also received dozens of letters from MPs in Parliament. But the icing on the cake was something we hadn’t expected – following the media event the kids received an invitation to present their views directly to the Parliament Health Select Committee by videoconference. The kids were great in the conference and talked openly to the Committee about why they felt tobacco advertising reform was needed, and the Health Select Committee went on to formally recommend a ban on Powerwalls.

But here’s the real bonus – the cherry on top of the icing, if you will. Throughout the project we witnessed the students get increasingly excited about how even though they were 'just kids' that they could truly make themselves heard in a pretty major way on an issue they felt passionate about. We couldn’t help but speculate about the lasting effects this experience would have on them, to know from such a young age that they have the power and the ability to make a difference on issues that matter.

At the end of the project I asked the kids how it felt to have been directly involved with the political decision-making process, and one of them shouted "AWESOME!" and did a victory dance.

Now that’s a result.