When Vicente Sarmiento Ledesma, a 24 year old boy, was murdered in the city of Guayaquil his father, Manuel Sarmiento Ledesma, started a foundation in his name hoping to change Ecuador's penal code to include harsher penalties for delinquency. Manuel needed to collect signatures from 10% of the adult population to present his case to congress.
With Mauri Grey's philanthropic support, the foundation invited citizens of iconic Guayaquil neighborhoods to stay inside their homes, wearing t-shirts that resembled convict's uniforms to illustrate the uncanny and unsetting problem with the status quo of crime in Ecuador: Honest citizens behind bars and criminals running free in the streets.
The Vicente Sarmiento Ledesma Foundation collected 850,000 signatures within less than a week and pushed their proposed amendment into action within a month.
Case study
Accolades
- Bronze, Public Relations for Foundation Vicente Sarmiento, Jail. — Festival de Publicidad El Condor de Oro, 2011
- Recognition for the Social Benefit, Foundation Vicente Sarmiento, Jail. — Festival Caracol De Plata, 2011