PolitiGo – referendums explained in a quick, simple and neutral way.
(Want to watch the video above with English subtitles? https://youtu.be/D33F1y9BAh8 )
The fact that Switzerland actually gives the «power to the people» simply cannot be taken for granted. And yet it happens, over and over again. On average, only ~35% of all 18-35-year-old citizens with a right to vote regularly cast theirs.
Beatrice, the president and co-founder of PolitiGo, believes every voice makes a difference. PolitiGo became her way of helping her peers exercise their civil rights fully and in a relaxed manner.
Step one was building a team of volunteers willing to invest time and effort into this project outside of office hours or university lectures – a team of people striving for a same goal: getting the younger Swiss generations to vote.
The team was built (you’ve already met most of the co-founders in our intro video) and a plan to reach our goal was drawn: we plan on setting-up a free and unbiased one-stop-shop solution which allows young people to access short videos explaining upcoming national initiatives in all four national languages plus English, featuring spokespeople from all national parties in a bid to allow a variety of voices to be heard by the decision makers of tomorrow. In order to reach our audience, we share our videos across all major social media platforms with a concerted communications strategy as well as our website (the one-stop shop), where all videos are made available and easily viewable.
Here is one of the pilot videos shot for one of our referendums voted on in September 2018 (to see the opposing opinion, scroll down): https://youtu.be/T0QNstIN-qo (with English subtitles).
Tackling a national issue on a national level
PolitiGo intends to shoot 8-9 videos per national initiative (one video summarizing the initiative in a neutral manner, one per party represented on a national level – currently 7 – and when relevant, one featuring the committee having initiated a referendum topic) all with a maximum duration of 2 minutes. If a party chooses to take no specific side, it will be offered a video slot of 30 seconds to explain its stance. All videos will be shot using professional gear.
The political parties and committees have the opportunity to select a representative for each initiative. Each politician will be asked the same set of politically balanced questions, and each party has the same conditions – all politicians can shoot the videos in their own mother tongue. All videos are then subtitled in German, French, Italian, Romansh and English – allowing all Swiss citizens, new and old, to interact with a same source of information without linguistic barriers.
By including the parties and having them speak for themselves, we avoid promoting one-sided information.
As a start-up we’re always striving to improve on our offering so we’re more than happy to hear from you what you think about our project and what we could do to make it better and more useful to you. Please fill out our short survey: https://goo.gl/forms/Bu2Dy98kR6lNNZct2
Here is another pilot video shot for one of our referendums voted on in September 2018 (to see the opposing opinion, scroll up): https://youtu.be/2TS2k3KNxRg (with English subtitles).
Your support for an ambitious project
Your donation will allow us to shoot, translate and publish videos which will drive easier decision-making for Swiss citizens in the upcoming national referendums in 2019.
For PolitiGo to exist on the long-term, we’re looking to partner with foundations, politically neutral institutions as well as the government to cover our costs. As a non-profit association, we need 30,000 CHF to cover our video production costs as well as standard administrative, IT and advertising costs through a cycle of referendums (e.g. February 2019).
Thanks to your donation, we will be able to show other potential private and institutional long-term donors that there is support and more importantly a need for our project. If the sum of donations exceeds the expected amount, we’ll use it to produce videos for the next referendums. And with only our target amount, we’ll still do our best to shoot, translate (subtitles) and publish videos explaining the initiatives for the upcoming referendums in February 2019.
We are actively looking for a video producer who believes in the project to join us, as this would reduce our running costs by 90%! If you are that person, please get in touch.
All amounts are welcome! THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION!!!