Ambassador concept - Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre

Step-by-Step

1. Choose a topic that you would like to promote within the community or city, such as promoting healthy lifestyles.

2. Recruit citizens of the community who are interested in a variety of topics related to your chosen topic, are already active in these areas (privately or professionally) and are interested in passing on information to other citizens. Good recruitment opportunities include community action days, self-initiated information evenings, health days, local press, but also targeting local health care providers.

3. Develop trainings that you want to conduct with the interested parties. Prepare materials for the workshops and seminars. In addition to content related information, think about soft skill exercises for the participants.

4. Meet for an open exchange with the interested citizens. Present your main topics (e.g. nutrition or stress management) and raise awareness for the relevance of the topics. Take information and suggestions on existing actions, structures and qualifications.

5. Train the ambassadors. Through several weeks of seminars and workshops, concrete content and methods are taught to motivate citizens for the selected topic (e.g. a health-promoting lifestyle) and support them in changing their behavior and passing on the knowledge.

More about the tool

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

The concept enables a targeted transfer of knowledge, which is essential for the sustainability of a project.
New insights into the topics can spread quickly with the help of a network.
Through actors who are themselves citizens of the community, a sustainable anchoring of the structures can be better developed.
By involving local actors, existing offers, e.g. for workshops, can be used.

Disadvantages:

The training of ambassadors is very time-consuming in terms of preparation (creation of materials) and implementation (seminar units, workshops).
Recruiting ambassadors can be difficult without a previous lifestyle program (=sensitization & visible effects for the individual). This is because a lack of trust (external actors vs. welded-in local community) leads to a lack of relevance for citizens.

Application into practice

Many people are aware that lifestyle has a decisive influence on the development and course of diseases of the civilization. Nevertheless, it has been difficult to effectively communicate the current scientific findings to individuals and/or the population and to anchor a sustainable health-promoting environment. There are often many individual measures, but establishing sustainable health-promoting structures in communities is a major challenge. With the support of the sub-project "Does health arrive?" in münster.land.leben, the sub-project "Healthy Lifestyle Community" has set itself the goal, in addition to improving the individual health of individual participants in the lifestyle intervention program, of creating sustainable structures that support as many citizens as possible in leading a healthy lifestyle in the long term. The lifestyle program "Healthy Together - Living in Billerbeck" consists of a 10-week intensive phase consisting of interactive seminar units (e.g. on the topic of cardial health), workshops (e.g. on the topic of stress management) and regular health checks. After completion of this intensive phase, the now so-called alumni are accompanied by monthly refresher, consolidation and networking meetings for a period of up to 2 years. This is where the ambassador concept comes in. Through the monthly meetings, relevant content on the topics of nutrition, exercise, relaxation and community are deepened and new impulses are given to enable the alumni to make long-term behavioral changes and to strengthen the community. During these monthly meetings, alumni of different starting points come together and partly act as ambassadors for the new participants, partly they are further qualified. The goal of the ambassador concept, which is embedded in the so-called alumni concept, is to enable the alumni to go beyond imparting knowledge to changing their own behavior. Furthermore, other citizens of the community are to be motivated to adopt a healthy lifestyle and informed about how they can act as multipliers of a healthy lifestyle.

Hints from practice

Try to build trust with the citizens from the beginning, only then they will actively participate in the exchange and the workshop and seminar units.
Involve the participants in the selection of topics, so that active discussions are stimulated, e.g. through the exchange of experiences.
Ensures a pleasant atmosphere at the meetings, e.g. by jointly arranged break buffets. In this way, for example, healthy foods and beverage alternatives can also be brought directly into focus.

Testimonial

Back to Tools & Methods

Tools & Methods