Band Aid, Radi-Aid, and how to improve our compassion for the world
Inspired by a brief chat with a co-worker about food aid in Africa, I've started reading a fascinating book: Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia since Live Aid by Peter Gill. The book begins with Ethiopia's 1984 famine, and the reaction it inspired in western countries - including Band Aid, the charity created by pop singer Bob Geldof which made 5 million pounds for Ethiopia famine relief with their record 'Do they know it's Christmas.' "As Ethiopians have pointed out ever since,"Gill writes, "they did of course know it was Christmas because the starving were mainly Christian."
I wasn't around to watch pop songs in 1984, but did encounter the 2014 remake of "Do they know it's Christmas," which raised money to fight Ebola. I came across the song on the site of Radi-Aid*; it was the winner of the 2015 "rusty radiator" prize which goes annually to "the fundraising video with the worst use of stereotypes.” Other criticism of the song included the Washington Post article "They know it's Christmas," and a BBC interview with a nurse and Ebola survivor who described it as "cringeworthy."
Many well-known organisations have been recipients of these "rusty radiator" prizes. In 2016, the winner was Save the Children. The runner up was the organisation I work for, World Vision. But on the other hand, all of the organisations who have won "rusty radiator"prizes are quite successful at raising money. "Do they know it's Christmas"raised over 1.5 million dollars to fight Ebola within 5 minutes of it being launched. Save the Children and World Vision have world-wide reach, helping communities access safe water, healthcare, education, economic opportunities...I feel good about the work we do in Vanuatu. And it's true that there are very real problems in the world. What's wrong with publicizing the tragedies caused by poverty and disease, if it inspires people in better-off countries to feel compassion and share their resources?
There are plenty of ways to answer that question. One of the simplest answers is "nothing." It's good to feel compassion - I'm a big idealist, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how better to love others. That's what I want my life to be about. But when a simplistic picture of suffering is painted, like in the "Do they know it's Christmas" song, we fall into the trap of thinking that the world is a simple place. "We" have a lot, "they" don't have much. The solution is clear - just open your heart, give what you have, and the world will be healed.
Giving is good, but you need to know someone in order to know how to give to them. Basically, our love for the world needs to be more humble, have a longer attention span, and be tolerant of more complexity than the knee-jerk compassion inspired by "rusty radiator" videos. We can't expect people in far-off, strange places to be easier to help than the people in our own lives. Even with our own family members, isn't it easy to assume we know what's needed in a particular situation and rush in with help or advice that just misses the mark? These are individual people we have lived with our whole lives - how much easier is it to miss the mark when trying to help hundreds or thousands of individual people we have never met, in places that are foreign to us?
I wasn't around to watch pop songs in 1984, but did encounter the 2014 remake of "Do they know it's Christmas," which raised money to fight Ebola. I came across the song on the site of Radi-Aid*; it was the winner of the 2015 "rusty radiator" prize which goes annually to "the fundraising video with the worst use of stereotypes.” Other criticism of the song included the Washington Post article "They know it's Christmas," and a BBC interview with a nurse and Ebola survivor who described it as "cringeworthy."
Many well-known organisations have been recipients of these "rusty radiator" prizes. In 2016, the winner was Save the Children. The runner up was the organisation I work for, World Vision. But on the other hand, all of the organisations who have won "rusty radiator"prizes are quite successful at raising money. "Do they know it's Christmas"raised over 1.5 million dollars to fight Ebola within 5 minutes of it being launched. Save the Children and World Vision have world-wide reach, helping communities access safe water, healthcare, education, economic opportunities...I feel good about the work we do in Vanuatu. And it's true that there are very real problems in the world. What's wrong with publicizing the tragedies caused by poverty and disease, if it inspires people in better-off countries to feel compassion and share their resources?
There are plenty of ways to answer that question. One of the simplest answers is "nothing." It's good to feel compassion - I'm a big idealist, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how better to love others. That's what I want my life to be about. But when a simplistic picture of suffering is painted, like in the "Do they know it's Christmas" song, we fall into the trap of thinking that the world is a simple place. "We" have a lot, "they" don't have much. The solution is clear - just open your heart, give what you have, and the world will be healed.
Giving is good, but you need to know someone in order to know how to give to them. Basically, our love for the world needs to be more humble, have a longer attention span, and be tolerant of more complexity than the knee-jerk compassion inspired by "rusty radiator" videos. We can't expect people in far-off, strange places to be easier to help than the people in our own lives. Even with our own family members, isn't it easy to assume we know what's needed in a particular situation and rush in with help or advice that just misses the mark? These are individual people we have lived with our whole lives - how much easier is it to miss the mark when trying to help hundreds or thousands of individual people we have never met, in places that are foreign to us?
Fortunately for us, not everyone is as ignorant as we are about the complex lives of these individuals in "foreign" places. They know their own lives very well, as you'd expect. Radi-Aid also awards annual "golden radiator" awards, for fundraising videos which "communicate in a nuanced, creative and engaging way, without using stereotypes – and still manage to raise money for your campaign." One common trait of many winners is that they highlight the voices of the people they are trying to help, letting viewers listen to them as real people - the driving agents in their own lives. Sometimes the nominees for "golden radiator" awards are the same organisations that have won "rusty radiator" awards in the past, like Save the Children. This goes to show that, again, development is complex - and there aren't "good organisations" and "bad organisations." We're all (for the most part) trying to rethink and improve what we do - and how we talk about it.
And like in many complex situations, sometimes humor can help us rethink how we talk about aid. Here is favorite video on the Radi-Aid website, which I've watched (and posted to Facebook to make my friends watch) more than once - "Africa for Norway." I think it's brilliant, and makes a good point - enjoy!
* Radi-Aid is an annual campaign created by the Norwegian Students’ & Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH). The goal of Radi-Aid is to "challenge the perceptions around issues of poverty and development, to change the way fundraising campaigns communicate, and to break down dominating stereotypes.
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