Share Your Stories During “Meet My Grandma” Campaign
Contributed By R. Scott Lloyd, Church News staff writer
Everyone has two grandmothers, and the Church is asking for stories about them during the “Meet My Grandma” campaign, September 20-29.
Article Highlights
- The purpose of the campaign is to get people thinking about, learning about, and sharing about their grandmothers.
- Don't miss the 90-second video about grandmothers from Ghana, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Russia, Italy, and the U.S.
Everybody has two grandmothers, and the Church’s FamilySearch International is soliciting stories about them during a worldwide Meet My Grandma campaign, September 20-29.
“At the heart of the campaign is a 90-second video that we created that is purely and truly international in its scope,” said Brad Lowder, international marketing manager for FamilySearch.
Watch the video at www.FamilySearch.org/MeetMyGrandma during the campaign.
The video shows individuals telling about and interacting with their grandmothers in various countries: Ghana, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Russia, and Italy.
“Rather than taking a production crew from Salt Lake City around the world, we engaged the publishing services managers of the Church in these countries and provided them with a video storyboard so they could film their segment locally,” Brother Lowder explained. “The result is this video that is very sweet.”
For example, a voice-over of a boy in Ghana is heard saying, “She taught me that to stay young, I had to stay in the game,” as scenes are shown of him playing soccer with his grandmother on the beach.
A young man in Japan says, “She showed me that the best way to find my voice was to share it.” The scene shows him performing a duet with his grandmother.
The spirit of Elijah is the manifestation of the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of families.
Share stories about your grandmas during a worldwide Meet My Grandma campaign, September 20-29.
Share stories about your grandmas during a worldwide Meet My Grandma campaign, September 20-29.
In each country, subtitles will be provided except for the scene that is in the language of that country.
“The purpose of the video is to give people that little tug, that little touch of the spirit of Elijah that something inside them stirs,” Brother Lowder said.
“Our intention is for people to share a story that’s special about their grandmothers, share it on social media, share it with their family, with their kids, their siblings, their parents, their cousins. Because what makes family history come alive is the sharing of the stories and the legacy that we have because of our ancestors.”
To that end, part of the campaign is a social media component on Facebook and Instagram as well as FamilySearch blogs and newsletters, Brother Lowder explained.
Questions will be posed day by day such as “What was your grandmother’s nickname?” The day after that question is posed, the responses will be displayed in a word cloud showing the most popular grandmother nicknames from around the world.
One of the themes will be “I have my grandma’s _____.” The blank presumably will be filled in by individuals with not just physical characteristics but personality traits such as “I have my grandmother’s adventurous spirit.”
Advance publicity for the “Meet My Grandma” campaign includes a challenge for people around the world to collectively submit at least 10,000 stories of grandmas in 10 days. But the numbers are not really what’s important, Brother Lowder said.
“The main message is to think of one story about your grandma that’s special to you, and then share it,” he explained.
“When you think about [an explanation from Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] that the spirit of Elijah is the manifestation of the Holy Ghost bearing witness of the divine nature of families, … that’s what drove the decision to create this kind of campaign surrounding grandmothers,” he said.
