3. Bono sings “Every generation gets a chance to change the world.” Another inspirational call to arms to fight African poverty? No, Bono is commercially exploiting his “save Africa” image to shill for Blackberry, who are sponsoring the latest U2 tour.”
2. “Children trust adults to keep their promises.” A parental advice web site?
No, World Vision UK is manipulating our feelings about children to campaign for increased aid.
Children rely on G8 promises. Children are speaking out for change – and the G8 must listen.
As if that were not enough, World Vision UK calls for more: some children should attend G8 meetings, to be trotted out for G8 photo-ops:
Shouldn’t their voices be heard at the top table? When will we see a G8 that rolls out the red carpet to listen to someone young and who is not in a suit? After all, it is always much harder as an adult to tell a child that a promise made is not being kept.
1. The Save Darfur thong (from the great blog “Wronging Rights”)
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I’m in no means defending the Safe Darfur thong, but it’s worth noting that it comes from Cafepress. Whenever you upload a design to that site, it automatically generates the same products for that design: t-shirts, mugs, hats, and always, at the very end, a thong.
So while it’s about a distasteful as advocacy can get, it’s likely not fully intentional, just a byproduct of Cafepress’s product generation system.
When Shell or BP use spotted green tree frogs in their advertising, environmentalists call it `greenwash’.
As `brownwash’ might be an unacceptable term for marketing mobile phones, maybe you could come up with a term for the use of small brown children for underwear sales.
To echo Matt, the Save Darfur thong is on CafePress which allows anyone to put designs on apparel and sell said apparel. The CafePress store with the Save Darfur thong is not the CafePress store of the Save Darfur Coalition to which everyone is–at least implicitly–linking the thong.
The Save Darfur Coalition CafePress store (no thongs!): http://www.cafepress.com/savedarfur
Couldn’t Save Darfur protest on copyright grounds?
I understand 1. and 3. but I don’t see the problem with 2 at all.
It is true that children trust adults to keep their promises and the G8 leaders ahve made some pretty hefty and important promises, some of which they have not kept.
In fact children were invited to meet G8 leaders as part of the J8 conference. (The meeting was the source of the infamous and it seems misleading Obamagate photo).
Here are some details of the J8 summit:
http://www.j8summit.com/
And here are the messages the J8 participants gave to G8 leaders:
http://www.unicef.org/russia/ru/J8_2009_declaration_final_en.pdf
This was much more than a photo op, although we will need to wait to see how far the G8 leaders will take these views into account going forward.
I think teenagers at the G8 are a different story. World Vision UK seemed to be appealing to our parental instincts towards very young children.
Along with the misuse of children, this also has an uncomfortable echo with the paternalism of aid. What about the children’s own parents? Why are they left out of the picture?
Regarding 2 and 3, if I had a penny for every African woman and child that told me they never get to see the money nor the likes of Bono and his chums…
I have always been curious as to what %age of World Vision’s income and others like them actually ends up in the developing world
Re: #2 – so, you’re saying it’s not important for G8 to hear the voices of children as they make decisions that carry global ramifications? And if it is important, then what would you suggest practically? Sending G8 reps to the field is clearly out, per your posts on poverty tourism. The motivations of anyone else who attempts to speak for children are suspect and therefore invalid, per your previous point in this post about Bono.
… oh, crap, my blackberry is buzzing… will get back to you with more later…
@Ethnicsupplies
Interesting you say that. As I was walking (yes, with my feet b/c we don’t have $ for vehicles) a World Vision Land Cruiser passed by. I started to wonder to myself… if an NGO (or ‘implimentor’) got a grant for say $200k. They spend around $100k on 2 vehicles. They spend another $60k on hiring two nationals. That leaves $40k for the actual project, that’s 20%. But still haven’t purchased a lot of other stuff yet.
Just an extreme example off the top of my head to how I see money spent in Africa by Aid organizations.
The World Vision thing is somehow particularly discomforting because they’re essentially an evangelical organization that does development work. And while the intentions of the may be completely laudatory, there’s always something creepy about someone (especially an international someone) training children to influence their parents:
“Across Asia children are involved in children’s clubs, learning about health issues, talking to their peers about how to avoid HIV infection, warning classmates to watch out for the traffickers who trawl their villages, encouraging local government officials to improve their schools, training parents how to grow healthier food and be more hygienic at home, and even advocating against the alcohol salesmen who turn their dads into violent beasts at home.”
To respond to qualm storm – children are entitled to and do have views on issues such the ones you cite here. They have a right to access to information, the right to make up their own minds and to express their views including trying to influence the opinions and behaviours of adults in the societies where they live.
The important part of this for governments, aid egencies etc. is to support children’s participation in an ethical manner – not to manipulate their views or use them as window dressing.
Here is a link to a guide that was developed to promote good ethical practice in this area – World Vision are one of te organizations that contributed to and use this guide.
http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/cypguide/files/Child_and_Youth_Participation_Guide(1).pdf
re: Cafepress thong.
I manage a cafepress store – similarly, we use it as a fundraising tool.
As a cafepress store manager, you select the items you want your logo on. I personally find it extremely distasteful to choose to include your logo on a thong when fundraising for a cause as serious as what is happening in Darfur.
No cafepress store owner *has* to include thongs – it’s a choice.
Considering the opportunistic trashy propaganda the Save Darfur coalition spits out, the thong ought to come with instructions to be worn back to front and inside out.
Ian – I was expecting the UNICEF document to draw some conclusions or make recommendations about the use children and youth in development and was disappointed that its just an extensive annotated biography on the subject.
Of course children and youth have opinions and rights and concerns and everything else, including the right to influence the families and the societies in which they live.
But we should always be wary when an organization – especially a powerful international organization working in a poor community – urges children to act a certain way, or adopt a set of beliefs, or urge their parents to do or not do something.
Most of the time this is harmless or even positive – like children learning about the consequences of smoking and getting their parents to stop, or about the importance of recycling. But its a a slippery slope, with Pavlik Morozov and Stephen of Cloyes at the bottom.
We should be especially wary when that organization is World Vision, which in my experience frequently has a hard time distinguishing between evangelism and development.
I can’t speak for World Vision – but I see they have responded officially and this has been posted on the blog.
Looking at how this works in practice you might be interested to see this UNICEF review of the organization’s experience with child participation and the lessons learned. You will see that this looks at the creation of meaningful participation – not of using children as a means to deliver messages crafted by external agencies.
http://bit.ly/QnNeq
The UK WV seems to contradict what Richard Stearns (CEO/President WV US) stated in an interview with Guy Kawasaki in May 2007:
“12. Question: Why is World Vision so successful at fund raising?
Answer: The real secret of our fundraising is the notion of child sponsorship. We allow people to see the face of that one child – we make that child real to them. It is very difficult to raise money for poverty eradication – much easier to raise money to help a specific child. It makes it personal.
Of course we also have fiendishly clever and committed marketing people who really care about their cause. We also represent an amazingly compelling selling proposition: Where else can you spend your money and know that you may have saved a life, or changed the world for the better?”
(Link to the Original Site)
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/05/ten_or_so_quest/comments/page/2/