Our Work

Case Study

A Digital Transformation and Stakeholder Engagement Combination Initiative

The Challenge

In a multi-stakeholder coalition including Myanmar Garment Workers Association, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Sequa, Confederation of Trade Unions (CTUM) and others called SMART Myanmar (funded by the European Union) – the agency was tasked to support the development and deployment of an educational application for garment workers in Myanmar. In Myanmar, the garment workers are one of the highest risk groups for occupational health and safety, sexual assault and trafficking and more. A darker fact is that during the COVID-19 pandemic many were laid off and sought income through sex work, making them doubly vulnerable. This would evolve from basic labor rights and safety information into COVID-19 protections, where we sought to engage key stakeholders of the impact of COVID-19 on industry guidelines, workers’ rights and related discussions – Much of which were unclear, even to those directly affected or concerned.

The campaign’s primary mission was simply to equip garment workers with information and tools that are friendly to use and equip them to protect themselves completely. Objectives were (1) to develop a user-friendly, multilingual application for the garment workers and (2) encourage downloads by communicating it on appropriate channels.

This was to be done in phases from tech development, to media buying and communications. We encountered many challenges like women who may not speak the same language (i.e. Chinese, Burmese, English), low digital literacy in downloading and using applications, on-ground engagement prohibited due to workplace regulations and their 6 (sometime 7) day workweeks with full days, and how to target a very niche group with a low digital footprint. We then had to make the niche work relevant for wider factor workers and underserved communities in light of COVID-19.

The Solution

We would overcome this through a simple static application built for Android, research into their main influencers/micro-influencers and online multi-event series held during strategic off-hours of factories. COVID-19 presented the opportunity to capture a larger share of their attention during periodic closures, as well as extend the information to the wider public and vulnerable peoples through paid and creative content on our Facebook community. it’s the first time our client has considered to go fully online, and given the nature of the work, we led a digital transformation project which includes 3 parts - reviewing and improving existing processes and developing an online system to streamline license application process from start to finish.

The strategy was to keep thing simple in the design of the application from the animated characters to the tech stack and interface (static). We didn’t opt for anything fancy or hard to understand/update. We selected influencers in the health space since research showed a preference of these women (after a survey) for educational content specifically for health and mothering, that they got from a few random, but nevertheless influential, doctors with Facebook presences.