Our targets for criticism have evolved a new tactic of writing longwinded unreadable responses (at least Vernon Smith had brilliant ideas underlying his unreadable book reviewed today). So the Global Development Network wrote us a bureaucratic reply to the charge that they were too bureaucratic. World Vision’s reply to our charge that they were inappropriately manipulating our feelings towards children generated a similarly long-winded reply. To avoid the “tl;dr” comment we got on the GDN response, we did World Vision the service of extracting the high points of their response below. (We posted their letter in full here.) On a far more positive note, we are always grateful when organizations take the time to respond and we think it is a good sign of organizational health and accountability.
Thank you for inviting us to respond…
…World Vision does not focus on children in order to ‘tug at the heart strings’ and gain greater support for our campaigning and fund-raising work. Rather, World Vision focuses on children as, globally, more children than adults by far live in poverty … and are generally much more
susceptible to the effects of poverty than adults, especially during infancy…
…In response to the comment concerning children’s participation at international meetings such as the G8, World Vision, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, strongly believes that children have a right to express their views in all decisions that will affect them….
…However, we recognise that children’s participation, particularly at large national or international events can often amount to little more than tokenism. As such, in 2008, World Vision worked with Plan International, Save the Children, UNICEF and others to develop minimum standards for children’s participation at these events in order to ensure that their engagement is both meaningful and beneficial to all present…
Yours sincerely,
Philippa Lei
Senior Child Rights Policy Adviser
World Vision UK
8 Comments
@ Easterly et al
“World Vision’s reply to our charge that they were inappropriately manipulating our feelings towards children generated a similarly long-winded reply.”
This could only be a “serious” charge or even subject of discussion if you were so weak willed and sentimental as to fall prey to every serious appeal based on the magnitude of the world’s suffering.
You poor babies….
SS
In contrast, I find World Vision’s reply to be completely comprehensible, well-written and accurate in their attempt to address your criticism of them in your post “Shameless aid behavior awards of the month.” I felt that it was entirely unfair to equate their actions with Bono’s shameful “every generation gets a chance to save the world” commercial (he has really descended to a horrible place) and the atrocious Darfur thong.
Why don’t you clarify your criticism of World Vision and apologize for wrongfully including them in a group with Bono and thong designers instead of continuing to insult them with baseless accusations that their responses are incomprehensible?
World Vision is not known for emotionally manipulative pleas for support. That honor belongs to the Christian Children’s Fund, whose ads show hard-suffering children and are designed to make the viewer feel guilty. These kind of ads detract from the dignity of poor children. Ultimately, they are de-humanizing, hence the term “poverty porno.”
My concern is not that World Vision, Save the Children, Care, World Lutheran Foundation, etc. are becoming too aggressive in advocating for children. My concern is that they will become less aggresive in advocacy to the US Government since they depend for so much funding on the Federal PEPFAR program.
We added a link to our original post on World Vision.
I thought the World Vision response was unsatisfactory because they did not directly address their use of language like “Children trust adults to keep their promises” as a way to advocate for larger aid budgets, which I thought was clearly and inappropriately manipulating emotions.
ADULTS NEED TO KEEP THEIR PROMISES!?
The World Vision suggestion that adults have not been keeping their promises is hardly emotional manipulation but, alas understates the hypocrisy of the international development community. When the Millenium Challenge Goals were set up practically all Western donors including the U.S. signed on, indeed they had a role in elaborating them. Did they allocate a single additional penny toward them? Did they do anything to assure that they would be met? Did they do more than put them on a web site and say these are our goals? When it was clear that they would not be met and we were actually, if China was not counted, going backward in terms of their achievement was any reassessment made. No is the correct answer to all of these inquiries.
So if one were to “manipulate” emotions in the development sphere I would suggest “anger” not “sympathy”. The payoff in action would be exponential.
SS
SS:
I agree with you but accountability is a task for adults not children.
@ Bill Easterly
“I agree with you but accountability is a task for adults not children.”
Agreed – Let’s hope this is one of many steps in that direction.
Best.
SS
Hi Bill, I think that your point “accountability is a task for adults not children” is the apex of World Vision’s Campaign. Given this, it doesn’t seem like a guilt trip to me.
-Tori