World Cup campaign

As the world was captivated by the World Cup in Russia, we partnered with the Oscar-nominated filmmakers, the Aleppo Media Centre (AMC), to highlight the war crimes being committed by the host nation in Syria. To that end, AMC made a series of films focusing on some of the untold stories of northwest Syria.

We shipped costumes of the World Cup mascots to Idlib so that AMC could film “the mascots” meeting with children in displacement camps and people throughout Idlib. In doing so, we provided an insight into life in Idlib for football fans around the world. The stories were covered by the Guardian, the Independent, Newsweek, Viral Thread and Vice.

This was a global campaign that captured the imaginations of football fans who might not normally pay attention to Syria. Because sport is something that so often brings people together, we saw the World Cup as a chance to offer a different, rarely-seen glimpse into daily life in Idlib.

One challenge for the campaign was how hard it was to break into the sports coverage of the World Cup. Sports journalists didn’t really cover the campaign, but we did manage to place stories in other parts of the media, such as features and foreign desks.