Context & Challenge
One network, one voice, for the first time
The European Partnership for Democracy (EPD) is a network of 21 organisations supporting democracy in over 150 countries since 2008. In 2026, it did something it had never done before: speak publicly with one voice, in its first campaign as a network.
The timing made the task both urgent and difficult. Democratic erosion is no longer something Europe watches from a distance. Pressure on courts, captured media, foreign interference in elections and shrinking civic space are now European realities. At the same time, the organisations defending democracy are asked to justify their funding and their role more than ever.
Everyone agrees with democracy, yet almost no one hears the word anymore. It has become abstract, crowded out by wars and crises, and easy to dismiss as institutional language. EPD needed its audiences to feel what is at stake, without taking a partisan side, without relying on fear, and without sounding like an institution talking about itself.
EPD asked MOJO to build the campaign from the ground up: the strategy, the idea, the film and its release across Europe.
Strategic Insight
We already know the rules
The easy option would have been to justify EPD’s existence: the funding, the projects, the results. But given the current climate, with authoritarian pressure rising across the globe and inside Europe, the moment called for a stand, not for compliance with a deepening authoritarian trend. We chose to reaffirm the meaning of democracy, rather than defend an institution’s record.
Our starting point was that democracy’s principles are already familiar to everyone. We learn them before we can spell the word: don’t exclude others, don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t interrupt, don’t hurt. The playground is where democracy is first practised.
Some people appear to have forgotten these basic rules. It was time to remind them.
Solutions
One question, told on screens across Europe
The campaign lives in the gap between what we teach children and what we accept from adults in public life. Rather than asking audiences to believe in an abstract system, it asks why we no longer hold power to the standard we hold every child to. The challenge doesn’t come from an NGO, a politician or an agency. It comes from children, with no political agenda at all.
This is what makes the idea strategically sound, beyond its emotional force. It stays above the left-right debate, which a non-partisan network requires. It needs no translation of a political argument to work in any of the priority countries. And it carries a hopeful premise: if we all learned these values once, we can still act on them.
The film launched on 15 September, the International Day of Democracy to build awareness. Then a more informative phase followed on LinkedIn, reaching the Brussels EU community of policymakers, institutions and journalists with two carousel ads. One unpacking key facts and eye-opening statistics, another setting out the case for democracy and why it matters.
In parallel, EPD’s member organisations released the film on their own channels. EPD carried the message at European level, while its members carried it into each national conversation.
Results & Impact
The campaign runs until the end of October 2026. Final results will follow.
