EDF congress on Disability and media Contribution from the Netherlands: the challenge for the Netherlands: a mass-media campaign The year 2003 is the second year of the campaign ‘The Challenge for the Netherlands’. This nation-wide campaign on image building encourages contacts between persons with and persons without disabilities or chronic illnesses; the contacts should be based on the interests and passions they share. Shyness in reactions, the inability to interact, must become a subject of debate, by a humoristic approach. The campaign takes a prominent place in the media – on Dutch television, on the radio as well as in the newspapers; and put Dutch society in motion. There are numerous spin-offs. The most important one is a TV-serial which now is in preparation. The Challenge for the Netherlands was initiated by the Dutch Council of the Disabled and the Chronically ill, the Dutch Federation of Parents’ Organisations and the Association Somma. The Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports has made the campaign possible. Concept The Challenge for the Netherlands is based on a clever marketing-communication concept. All TV and radio commercials and advertisements link up with existing programs in Dutch media by showing contacts between people with and without a disability. So there is a direct link between paid and free publicity. We arranged the contacts all by ourselves and many well-known Dutch persons voluntarily make a contribution. There is an obvious ‘multiply-effect’: the receipt of our investments in commercials is multiplied because much more time and many more pages are put to our disposal. Our message generates a remarkable influence in free publicity. Influential persons now also claim that contacts between people with and without a disability are necessary! The media-contacts are supported by our own website and by activities all over the country. The website informs people about all the contacts and the website itself is a meeting-point, where people can chat with each other and can insert advertisements in order to share activities. We organise ten local activity-days with challenging contacts between persons with and without a disability or illness. Each local activity-day consists of half a day of distributing leaflets in the city, a special activity attracting people of the local press as well as a kind of talk-show program on a location which has been fixed in advance. By all local activities we aim a maximal exposure in the regional/local media. Fundamental idea behind the campaign Contacts between persons with and without a disability or chronic illness really enable people to get in touch with each other and enable them to adapt or complete the image of each other. A more realistic image building of people with a disability or a chronic illness offers better possibilities for participation and full citizenship. Starting co-operation with media-professionals As interest groups we made a campaign with media-professionals and advertisers. This choice sometimes is a subject of debate and it includes taking some risks. But one has to explore his own limits of scope and one must trust people who know how your message can have an optimal impact on the general public. The campaign made the ball start rolling. There is more room for persons with a disability or chronic illness in the media. Companies as the Dutch McDonald’s ask us which challenge they can take up. The Dutch TV producer Chiem van Houweninge now works with us on a comedy about four young men with a disability, starting up an internet-company. The leading actors all must have a disability themselves. We expect that the series which will last a few years and will initiate a new era. An era in which persons with a disability or an illness no longer will be excluded from participation to the Dutch media; they will be more visible than ever before and they can stand up for their own interests. Materials TVC Adams family – about 40 seconds TVC PSV-Ajax (football-match), about 40 seconds TVC Evers getting up (radio & music) about 40 seconds All with subtitling in Dutch and English Fragments of free publicity TV programs Radio-commercials (in Dutch) Various articles in newspapers and magazines (in Dutch) Promotion-materials (in Dutch) Former presentations of the campaign: International Disability Film Festival, Moscow 2002 Inclusion Europe, Brussels, 2003 EASPD congress, Graz 2003 Presentations for German and Slovakian sister-organisations, Utrecht 2003 Presentation for Lex Frieden, president Rehabilitation International, Utrecht 2003 Awards Publics Award of the Rotterdam festival of animation-films ‘Re-animate’ for animation on the website.