Case Study
Dayton Children's Hospital: MIA Short Film
A Need for Mental Health Services
It's a tough conversation. So many young kids today are struggling with how to cope, how to handle daily stresses, how to rectify things that have happened to them in the past. Now, more than ever we need to get our kids the assistance and support they really need.
Dayton Children's Hospital came to Boom Crate and asked us to create a film that would resonate with individuals who could help the kids in our community.
Enter. Mia.
Mia represents so many of the kids in our community struggling with performing, juggling responsibilities, understanding relationships, and working through trauma. You can see Mia in your friends, family, neighbors. But how far does it have to go before attention is paid?
MIA
The Challenge
Every 2 years, Dayton Children's Hospital holds a large fundraiser for the hospital that focuses on something of great need for the kids in our community.
For 2019, the fundraiser focused on mental health services. But how do you showcase the incredible need our community has to take care of our most at-risk kids, without being exploitative, raw or too sensational? Also, how do you get people talking about something that seems to have an incredible stigma?
We researched, held focus groups and decided that it would be best to share a story through a narrative with an actor. That way we could protect individuals, and also feature things in a caring way.
Our actor, Grace had a strong tie to individuals struggling with mental health and at just 16 years old, she was able to instantly relate, connect to and provide an amazing performance that got to the heart of the challenges that were being faced.
ROI
The Women’s Board of Dayton Children’s was able to raise nearly $1 Million Dollars at this event. And The MIA video set the tone. In a room of more than 600 people - there was complete silence when her story was shared. After, people continued the conversation about how they saw this story in their friends, family members, kids in their neighborhoods and all over. It continued to inspire donations and has become a great tool for the hospital to use in telling the story of the kids who have trouble telling their own stories.
Learn More
Mia is helping shed light on this incredibly important situation, showing us how easy it is to miss, how imperative it is to pay attention, and how deeply people need to connect.
In July, 2019 Dayton Children's was able to open an in-patient unit to help serve this population of kids in our community with the services they desperately need. Find out more about this incredible unit here:
childrensdayton.org/the-hub/dayton-childrens-unveils-behavioral-health-inpatient-unit
And stay tuned for an additional film we produced to help shed light on this important topic.