What Does This Campaign Mean?


Mindy Binderman, executive director of GEEARS: the Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, wants us to know how we can be original, genuine, and effective in our shared expectation to have all kids reading proficiently by the end of the third grade. Sure, campaigns aren’t boring, with their pretty signs and bumperstickers, but they also need to be meaningful.

“I want to talk to you about what a campaign means in our context, which goes beyond bumper stickers and sign waving. I’d like us to come away with a plan.”

“When we think about a Campaign, we think about a lot of things. Like kissing babies, raising money, maybe raising public awareness, like ‘Just Say No.'” Our Campaign to Get Georgia Reading is about building engagement and making things happen. It’s not just buzz words. It’s about opening and joining a community.”

So what’s the plan?

“Often this Campaign is explained in terms of ‘battles’ we need to win. I don’t really like military examples, but we do have a common enemy: cynicism. I think we can unite and form one big strategy to fight those enemies.”

Continue with us in our Innovation Video series and watch DECAL’s Bentley Ponder, who tells us we should hold our education leaders accountable for asking the hard questions.