Building Local Constituencies for Conservation
Rares flagship program for constituency building centers around whats called a Pride campaign. A hybrid of traditional education and private sector marketing strategies, Rare Pride campaigns inspire people who live in the worlds most biodiverse places to embrace conservation. Rare Pride has achieved significant impact in more than 50 countries, and our methods are now being contracted by large conservation organizations who want to utilize social marketing techniques for local conservation efforts, including The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, and more.
Why Rare Pride?
Rare Pride campaigns focus on building support for conservation at the local level. Some of the worlds most important sites for biological diversity are threatened by a lack of awareness and local community support. Targeted awareness-raising initiatives can dramatically build momentum for conservation by creating the constituencies necessary for initiating policy changes, legislative reform, and new protected areas; by catalyzing in-country private and public sector funding; by shifting public behavior toward more sustainable practices; and by focusing public attention on critically threatened ecosystems and species.
How do Pride campaigns inspire conservation?
Pride campaign managers are local conservationists from around the world who make a 2-year commitment to inspiring environmental protection at every level in their communities. Campaign managers are trained by Rare during a university diploma program in ecology, biodiversity, community-based conservation, and social marketing. Rare offers training in English at Georgetown University, in Spanish at the University of Guadalajara, in Bahasa Indonesia at the Bogor Agricultural Institute in Bogor, Indonesia, and in Mandarin Chinese at Southwest Forestry University in Kunming, China. After completing the training, campaign managers head back to their communities to begin implementation. Read more about training!
Pride campaigns utilize a charismatic flagship species, like the Saint Lucia parrot or the Philippine cockatoo, which becomes a symbol of local pride and acts as a messenger to build support for habitat and wildlife protection. Marketing tools such as billboards, posters, songs, music videos, sermons, comic books, and puppet shows make conservation messages positive, compelling, relevant, and fun for the community. Campaigns appeal to people on an emotional level, generating an increased sense of pride and public stewardship that goes beyond mere awareness-raising. Pride campaigns involve and engage every segment of the community: teachers, business and religious leaders, elected officials, and the average citizen.
How does Rare Pride measure success?
In addition to the marketing and education components of the campaign, managers employ sophisticated threat reduction metrics at every stage of the campaign, gathering meaningful evaluations of campaign goals and objectives. Throughout the campaign, Rare staff provide technical support and mentoring, while funneling knowledge back into the continual refining of the program. Rare Pride is currently being employed on a global scale, and has been successfully replicated by Rares local partner organizations in 52 countries.
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