Dmytro Serhiienko, Valeria Redka and Bohdana Fedosova study for a master's degree in marketing at the Sumy State University. In a contest video for the Ukrainian Student Advertising Festival, they raised the issue of pregnant women's work. The video, presented in an interesting and fun manner, won second place in the "Go to light — declare work!" category, supported by the ILO Project funded by the EU. We asked the winners to share what they wanted to say with their work.
It was interesting to work with an adult topic, which will also affect us in the future. Pregnant women are vulnerable and unprotected, especially if their work is undeclared. Since parents need to take care of themselves and their children, it makes sense to think about it in good time before finding employment.
The video was shot as a silent movie. According to the plot, the pregnant girl had informal employment. In a while, she took her maternity leave, but when she decided to come back, her job was taken. The story's message is that if the employee declared her work, she would have had a paid leave, protection against dismissal and other guarantees. But she lost all that because she accepted to work undeclared.
About important things, with touch of humour
To attenuate a story that is not funny, we added a scene with a robber at an ATM. The young mother had no money on her card, so even the robber took pity on her and gave her some of his money.
Don't you want declared work to be seen as a horrible, scary and coercive thing? Tell about it with a touch of humour. A straightforward manner, or even worse - coercive, on the contrary, will alienate the viewer.
We have not seen any state-sponsored videos that would both evoke laughter and make one think. If there were more of those videos, the number of declared workers would increase.
It would be great if people in Ukraine were employed formally, paid taxes, and got good retirement benefits. People who get ready to have a baby must understand that the state will help them not only because it is obligated to do so, but also because they made efforts to that end.
