Every refugee has a story to tell. Yet the stories we hear about refugees so often reinforce long-standing stereotypes, portraying them as helpless and hopeless victims—or worse, as invading hordes threatening national identity and placing unsustainable burdens on social services.

Witness Change set out to break down those stereotypes with 1000 Dreams, a photo-storytelling project launched on World Refugee Day. Authored by 48 refugee storytellers in Europe, the project captures 1,000 stories from other refugees in their communities, building a global movement with the aim of changing the narrative of the refugee experience.

Even after reaching more than 250 million people worldwide with its previous campaigns, Witness Change knew that this campaign needed to go even further. To help it harness the power of social media and drive greater reach, awareness, and engagement, the organization turned to Hootsuite.

Witness Change is a non-profit organization that uses visual storytelling to help excluded people reclaim their narrative and improve their lives. It aims to make a global impact through campaigns that engage international leaders, while also collaborating with regional grassroots organizations and providing funding and training to refugee storytellers to facilitate their future media careers as photographers, journalists, and storytellers. 

“Measuring narrative change is very difficult, very subjective, and something that has to be done over a very long period of time,” says William Lounsbury, communications and projects manager at Witness Change. “What we try to do for any of our projects is make sure that we are having impacts on multiple levels.”

For the 1000 Dreams campaign, Lounsbury and team needed more than a social media management tool—they needed a strategic partner to help them achieve the campaign’s goals of distributing stories, amplifying voices, and raising awareness at scale. The team looked to Hootsuite for help developing, launching, and evolving a winning strategy for the campaign.

Witness Change wasn’t originally looking for help with its social advertising strategy, but while working with Hootsuite, the team discovered the opportunity to further boost the reach and impact of the campaign with targeted ads.

“Advertising support is not something we sought out,” notes Lounsbury. “It was something that Hootsuite came to us with and helped guide us through the entire way.”

Using Hootsuite Ads helped Witness Change discover the social media ad targeting strategies that performed best for driving results, which will have lasting benefits for the ongoing 1000 Dreams campaign—as well as future campaigns. 

“We had somebody available to support and bounce ideas off, which was incredible,” adds Lounsbury. “We learnt a huge amount through this process, both because of the support of the Hootsuite team, but also just from looking at the results and seeing what's effective for us.”