NHS Volunteer Responders are reaching out to ethnic minority communities across England

Mediareach Advertising is supporting the NHS Volunteer Responders programme (NHSVR) ,delivered by Royal Voluntary Service and enabled by the GoodSAM app on behalf of NHS England.

Since the start of the pandemic, volunteers have been supporting those in need with shopping, prescription pick-ups, friendly phone calls and patient transport. Currently there are 400,000 volunteers who have put themselves on duty over the course of the pandemic and they have responded to over 1.8 million requests for help during this time.

Diversity communications experts, Mediareach Advertising, co-created content, targeted at volunteers and clients from multicultural heritage to encourage people to sign up as volunteers and also to raise awareness for those in need of the support. Mediareach were given the task of raising awareness of NHSVR within ethnic minority communities in ten identified locations in England to build confidence in the scheme and communicate how NHSVR can be accessed and supported by those communities.

Head of Marketing at Royal Voluntary Service, Paul Stafford, commented “We approached Mediareach as one of the leading specialist diversity marketing agencies in Britain to help increase awareness of NHSVR amongst ethnic minority communities. Members of those communities were encouraged to sign up to become volunteers, or to access the support available if needed, using multi-lingual communications and multiple media channels including digital, print and radio.”

Head of Media, Javed Husain, commented “The Mediareach team formulated an intensive media strategy to position the NHS Volunteer Responder programme at the heart of targeted ethnic minority communities. Community radio stations will be used and interviews were arranged in an array of languages to relay the benefits of the NHS Volunteer Responders programme and how just a few hours of one’s day could make another person’s life much easier.”

Alongside the radio campaign there is also an extensive print campaign targeting the diverse ethnic communities in England.

Speaking about the campaign, Mediareach’s CEO Saad Al-Saraf said: “Mediareach is proud to be working to support the NHS, and what sets this campaign aside from the others is the variety of languages and individuals such as doctors, volunteers and recipients of the service who took part.”

Now, with the support of Mediareach, more people from ethnically diverse communities are aware of NHS Volunteer Responders, as well as Royal Voluntary Service and the GoodSAM app, and how to take part.