Skip to main content

The power of the social ad isn’t something that we widely associate with being used for the greater good. When an ad pops up on Facebook, or an Instagram story binge gets rudely interrupted, it’s normally related to the latest shopping peruse. But for once, I found myself getting served relentlessly with ads for The British Red Cross annual ‘Miles for Refugees’ event in September.

After much self-badgering, I decided that I’d obviously been targeted for good reason and with that, I’ve signed up to take part. With encouragement from our Community Manager/Copywriter, Joe, we’ve now joined forces to create team Jolynne (I know).

Comical team names aside, the cause is something that really struck a chord with us. Seeing some of the big numbers involved – 34,000 people are forced to flee their homes every day due to conflict, violence and persecution. The challenge is to travel some of the distances they cover in a bid to find safety and freedom, and that’s only a small nod to what these people go through to stay alive. You can see some of the most frequented routes depicted below.

Whilst my 285 miles and Joe’s 555 miles don’t truly reflect what these journeys are actually like (and we’re under no illusion that they do), we’d like to take some of our own ethos from Brilliant’s health and wellbeing focus, to shed some light on the cause.

Distances completed in September, and all donations raised, will help The Red Cross support another 36,500 refugees and hopefully reunite even more than the 989 families they did in 2018.

So, you now see that an ad on social media can take you somewhere even more exciting than a shopping basket!

To keep up to date on everyone’s progress in September you can search #TeamRedCross on social channels and offer the participants some words of encouragement.

If you’d like to donate to team Jolynne you can do so here (thank you in advance, any donations, no matter how small, are greatly appreciated): https://milesforrefugees19.everydayhero.com/uk/lynne