First Aid for Humanity is a Program Teaching Tolerance trough a simple activation, a first-aid course.

Created in Poland, ranked the 3rd most xenophobic country in the world, this first aid training included creating 3 lifelike dummies based on 3 minorities, who face discrimination because of their faith, sexual orientation, or poverty.

The attendees were able to experience their own biases in a controlled environment, learn practical skills on the lifelike dummies and meet the real people behind them.

The program has been implemented in schools, activating the new generation of Poles to grow open and bias free.

The Background

Polish society is one of the most homogenous in Europe with the total number of ethnic minorities of only 2%. In a country where everyone looks the same, anyone who looks or acts in a different way creates tension.

For example, a great majority of Poles have negative attitude towards Muslims and feel threatened by them although 80% of Poles have never met any Muslim person in their life. Or, from other infamous facts, in 2021 Poland became the worst country in UE when it comes to treating its LGBTQ+ community.

BNP Paribas Poland, a bank with long term commitment to social inclusion, teamed up with the Polish Red Cross to launch an educational program inspiring Poles to realize and try to overcome prejudices against minorities.

We created First Aid for Humanity, a first aid training course aiming to teach participants, and beyond, that every life is worth saving. For this program,

We created unique CPR dummies, that look like real people who often face discrimination in Polish society. Khedi, a Muslim refugee, Krzysztof "Leon", a genderqueer activist and Grzegorz, a homeless man.

The strategy

Only 19% of Poles are fully confident in giving first aid. Given the high cultural homogeneity of Polish society, lack of skills is not the only challenge.

Fears arising from lack of knowledge and first aid skills combined with prejudices and biases towards diversity can have dramatic consequences.

We fear most what we do not know, and our prejudices are often based on irrational motives. Therefore, we aimed to confront poles with their convictions and provoke their reflection through the exceptional experience.

BNP Paribas since 2017 supports the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as part of the brand's long-term strategy. First Aid for Humanity campaign addresses areas such as: good health and well-being, reduced inequalities, peace, justice, and strong institutions, partnership for the goals, and brings them to life in an extraordinary way to spark the discussion.

The execution

In the center of execution are hyper realistic dummies. With all the essential functionalities, they enriched the experience of CPR by adding the element of realizing the unconscious biases, that sometimes can be a matter of life and death.

We started with a social experiment, where 24 people learned life-saving skills with the unusual dummies which caused fear, anxiety and curiosity. Participants had to confront their biases to learn to save a life.

At the end of the course, the participants had the opportunity to meet with the people behind the dummies and listen to their stories; This is how the empathy gap started to close.

The recording of the experiment was followed by a dedicated first aid training video, starring the people behind the dummies - Khedi, “Leon” and Grzegorz - became The official Red Cross materials teaching first aid in schools and red cross centers across Poland.

Results:

Building tolerance and open society in Poland is a long-term goal. However, the campaign already sparked a massive conversation among Poles about national biases.

We've already reached over 6 000 000 people through BNP Paribas, PCK and influencers’ channels communication. Individual profiles in SM have sparked with 800 campaign mentions and discussions upon tolerance, diversity and first aid – generating an additional over 2 000 000 reach.

The news portals, front-page celebrities, and culture icons involved in the discussion urging Poles to get involved generated 112 media mentions and 220 000$ earned media coverage within two weeks of the campaign.

Our campaign video has already impacted audience behavior: 32% of research participants declared growth in willing to provide first aid regardless of the victim's diversity (Source:Biostat qualitative study,n=50people).

Last, but not least, Grzegorz, a homeless man behind one of the dummies, was offered a job by BNP Paribas and hired.