Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside women and girls because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. In 2020, CARE worked in over 100 countries and reached more than 90 million people.
Since 2003, CARE has hosted its annual CARE National Conference (CNC) in May in Washington, D.C. Thousands of CARE advocates have come to the conference to advocate for the rights of the world’s most marginalized people – particularly women and girls – by focusing on policies that improve U.S. foreign assistance programs, address the lack of access to resources and opportunities, and foster lasting change for generations to come.
The COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 made it impossible to host an in-person gathering, even though the very people we advocate for have been the hardest hit by the pandemic. The show had to go on. CARE moved quickly to skill up, learn new technology, and became a leader in the virtual event sector with the CARE 2020 Virtual Summit.
The objectives of the Virtual Summit were for attendees to:
Partners: the CARE Virtual Summit was a live event streamed to Facebook Live and NowThis. Since the event was live streamed we were able to engage a national and global audience, with attendees from 50 U.S. states and 75 countries.
Engaging content: passionate advocates learned about the latest policy issues affecting women and girls globally, and heard from 21 individual speakers.
Compelling speakers: CARE advocates heard from Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Stacey Abrams, Senator Cory Booker, Amanda Gorman, CARE’s Global Advocate Iman and CARE Ambassador Bellamy Young as well as Representatives Susan Brooks, Grace Meng, and many more.
Peer-to-peer engagement: the virtual event was also supported by a custom mobile app, which allowed for interaction among small groups. Attendees could also access the live webinar, on-demand content, engagement tools, a resource library, and donation tools via the app.
