Walk the World 2009

I went to End Hunger: Walk the World with mom this year. Unlike in NL where they have their own website, I couldnt find Indonesian's event's website. Information is difficult to obtain in this part of the world :(

As I write this, I think the event in NL is still going on. I bet they are showing clips from Walk of World from other timezones along the way like the last time.

Speaking of the Dutch event, I would like to compare it with Indonesian one.

As I said, it's easy getting information about the Dutch event from their website that's in English and Dutch languages. They put up the route, video, info about the sponsors, and some facts about hunger. One can register on the website and also order some cheap sandwich & drink for that day.

Their Indonesian counterpart doesnt have their own website. I googled about the event and could only found 1 site about today's event: a reportage on it's press conference with Luna Maya, WFP's ambassadress, but it only stated that the event is held in Plaza Barat Senayan at 7am, and nothing about the ticketing. However, on Moving the World's site there's a page about Indonesian's event looking like that pic above. It only stated the contact person, even the timing indicated at 00:31 AM!

Here's what I found weird. This is an event that aims in getting donation. I can understand having its own website costs money. So how come the organization didnt use the opportunity to spread the word about it in , that I assume, free page? All they needed to do is to fill in the correct information, so there's no/little need to answering email inquiring about it.

Speaking of email, I tried emailing the contact person for information, but he didnt reply. If I were him, I would've created auto reply email with basic information.

Ok, to their defence, they put up several billboards on Jakarta's main roads. However, the way they design it is not very effective. They put the venue, the artists who are giving concert (big names like Andra and the Backbone, etc), the ticket's price, huge logo of the sponsor, but when it comes to where to get the ticket they use smaller font. I dont think you need a degree in marketing to know that it is important for your costumers to know where they can get your product, right? I kept missing out that info of this event!!!

So what to do?

I remember back in NL people could just go to the venue and register on the site. So we decided to do that this morning. We arrived at Plaza Barat Senayan at 7 AM. The security wouldnt let us in without tickets, but they had no idea where we could get them. They sent us to the other gate. Most of the volunteers I asked had no idea either. One gal told us to go back to the 1st gate and just give donation on a designated box to get it. Well, no one told us about that scheme before. Luckily, we met two gals, one of them is selling the tickets (just standing there with no sign like some kind of black market seller) and the other took us in to get our t-shirt.

We hung around chatting at the dompet duafa's tent before we started the walk. The thing was, we didnt have any breakfast and started to get hungry but there were not much we could do. Unilever tent's was giving out free sandwich for its own employees, other tents that we passed by only sold chips. So we did our 5K walk sans food. On the way we got free buavita juice and at the end point we got free ice cream. So unhealty... I was told that in the previous year the ticket included a snack and a t-shirt. I guess the economic down turn hit the sponsors' budget too. Oh wait.. Unilever booked some gains this year :P

Any way.. It's been a good day. The volunteers, organization did pretty well. Hope more children get food from this event.