The bed in the street

On Thursday 24 October and Friday 25 October all first year students from the AP Degree Programme in Service, Hospitality and Tourism Management in Valby took part in a 24-hour Case Challenge.

The goal of the Case Challenge is for students to use the skills they have acquired during their first semester to analyse and solve a problem for a company or organisation. This year the organisation was Kirkens Korshær.

The winning idea ‘The bed in the street’ was chosen among a total of 48 ideas.

Kirkens Korshær presented two challenges 

Kirkens Korshær is a 101-year-old organisation with 8000 volunteers and 400 employees. The organisation is a relief organisation that helps homeless people.

Based on their daily work, the organisation presented two challenges for the students to choose between.

The first challenge was how Kirkens Korshær could secure more private funding to create shelters for the many homeless – regardless of nationality.

The second challenge was how to improve Kirkens Korshærs secondhand shops.

48 ideas 

8 teams came up with a total of 48 ideas that were presented on Friday morning. After a vote, 8 ideas went through to the final. On the judging panel were head of development, Jesper Rønn Simonen, and editor, Heiner Lützen Ank, from Kirkens korshær.

The judges were impressed with the students many creative ideas, but chose the project ‘The bed in the street’.

“The bed in the street is developed with the goal to create awareness about Kirkens Korshær’s work and the problems regarding homelessness in Denmark, thereby increasing private contributions to the organisation. In addition, the goal is to reach out to a broader and younger audience by using viral campaign methods and involving the contributors actively in the marketing process” Said by the winning team about their idea.

In short the campaign is built around a series of pop-up-events followed up with YouTube videos, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The pop-up-event consists of beds being put up on different locations around major Danish cities, giving the Danes a chance to take pictures and show their support for the homeless in Denmark. The pictures would then be used for viral campaigns, Kirkens Korshær’s social platforms as well as for private profiles.

Through the increased attention and by using social platforms the goal is to create a whole new group of private contributors (the 20 to 25-year-olds). At the same time there is also a focus to create more awareness and clearness about the opportunity to make donations to Kirkens Korshær via SMS.