Challenge
In 2014, the Philippines had a shortage of 15,000 teachers. The gap existed due to various reasons:
- Teaching is perceived as a low-paying job
- Adapting to teaching conditions and tasks are a challenge; and
- Poor access to teacher preparation programs
Solution
To address the issue of teacher shortage and quality, PBED launched the Scholarship Teacher Education Programs to Upgrade Teacher Quality in the Philippines (STEP UP) Program. Its mandate was to attract good-performing college graduates and professionals to the teaching profession by offering them competitive scholarship packages.
To strengthen the initiative, Evident developed a communication strategy with the goal of attracting college graduates aged 21 to 45 years old to the program and acquiring 2,400 scholarship applications in 4 months.
To address the issue of teacher shortage and quality, PBED launched the Scholarship Teacher Education Programs to Upgrade Teacher Quality in the Philippines (STEP UP) Program. Its mandate was to attract good-performing college graduates and professionals to the teaching profession by offering them competitive scholarship packages.
To strengthen the initiative, Evident developed a communication strategy with the goal of attracting college graduates aged 21 to 45 years old to the program and acquiring 2,400 scholarship applications in 4 months.
Results
Evident produced daily content for 4 months, highlighting the impact and appeal of teaching, which helped grow the STEP-UP Up Facebook page’s online community and traffic to the STEP-UP website
- For Facebook, the STEP-UP page was able to acquire a total of 63,000 new fans. This was 40% more than STEP UP’s original fanbase.
- The Facebook page was able to engage with 513,000 unique individuals; the campaign was able to achieve nationwide penetration.
- The website averaged 16,300 sessions every month from 13,200 visitors. Most of these belonged to the 24 to 40 age group, the target age range for scholarship eligibility.
- PBEd received an average of 300 weekly inquiries about the program during the campaign period.
#DearTeacher convinced 3,200 people to take the step to leave their comfort zones, take a shot at teaching, and see how they can impact the lives of young Filipinos in the most meaningful way. That was 125% of PBEd’s given target.
Overall, the campaign helped uplift the image of the teaching profession and increase teacher quality in the Philippines.
Awards won:
- 2017 Boomerang award for Effectiveness in Database/Lead Generation
- 2017 Anvil Award Gold for Public Relations Tools: Multimedia/Digital
