When aid gets personal

[Claire Hawk]

First published on http://hawk-emptysky.blogspot.com

The headquarters of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in Epulu, DRC was attacked over the weekend and buildings burnt, guards killed, okapis eaten, local people displaced. I want to do something. I want to take action. I want to make this right, this one thing, to make it better. I want to spend my days running campaigns. I want to go there right now and fix it. I want the people who did this sent packing. I have an overwhelming (and entirely impractical) urge to rush off and bring home an okapi. I've been there. I've met the people. I've seen the okapis. I've walked in the forests. I've sat by the river. This is personal.

But that's where the problem comes, isn't it? Personal means taking sides. It means choosing which people and which places to help based, not on the greatest need or opportunity, but on personal feelings. Based on the places I happen to have visited. It means picking strategies because of anger or fear or guilt. It's about rescuing from the violence my own magical memories, not contributing to lasting solutions for the local people. I don't want to do that.

Thousands of aid marketing campaigns artificially try to create that personal connection to a person or a place. In the process, the impression is created that aid should be personal and that passion is an acceptable substitute for research, knowledge and local understanding. But it's not true.

I don't really know what is going on there. I can't. I'm thousands of miles away with no real understanding of the conflicts and resource inequalities and deprivations, beyond a two-week visit and a whole lot of NGO- and media-mediated hype. Good aid, smart aid, should only be deployed where evidence suggests it is likely to do the  job and where it is the best way of making things better. Anything else risks making things worse.

Of course, I'll do someting in my personal capacity, even if it's just to tell people, because if I wasn't the kind of person to act, I imagine I'd be in a different industry. But becasue I am in this industry I feel like I need to choose my actions based on what is most likely to improve things and taking into account possible unintended consequences. Sometimes the toughest part of working in aid is not allowing personal feelings to overwhelming rational, evidence-based decision-making.

[Sarah Davitt]

On the marketing point, at least from a communication arts perspective -- If communicating something, we need to make it big enough so that everyone knows it, or small enough that everyone can feel it.   Or you aren't really communicating... especially when bridging a language barrier (even if the bridge is between the visual and the written/spoken.)   

Knowing this makes a really good Aid Marketteer.  It also leave you open to visual and written cliches -- about aid-porn, cultural misreads, all sorts of things including more pictures than one can stand showing children hands out-stretched (or in a non-aid context... This) 

So this was all the secret plan of Mr. Edward Bernays (documentary 1, 2, 3, 4), and now we have lots of data and computers and data minded people and more access to the images and words that secretly tell us to do things -- and we are becoming more aware of those things that secretly tell us to do things.

So what is next?  Could we change the way we market aid?  Could we change the way we fund it?  Could we change the way we feel about the work?  How we collectively choose to record or distribute the work?  How can we make these tried and true methods different, successful, and supportive of the work -- because the work is good, important, or well managed -- not because the kid is cute and shirtless?  IF any of these things could be done to change those 3 seconds any marketteer has to 'hook'  donor -- what would have to be done, and what would we win?

[J.]

This post articulates for me the crux of the aid marketing/aid implementing divide and dilemma:

Good marketing makes things personal, therefore to market aid successfully, we have to make it personal -->

In order to have money to implement programs which make the world better, we have to market aid; because we're not the for-profit sector, we can't afford ineffective/inefficient marketing. Therefore we have to market aid in the most time-proven way(s) possible --->

If we don't market aid in the most time-proven, effective ways possible we cannot accomplish our core mission ---->

The most effective way of marketing aid is establishing that personal link between people/places for whom/where we work and donors ----->

In order to do aid, our marketing has to make it personal.

(bangs head on wall)

[Sarah Davitt]

I think this is the catch of conflict.  I mean rolling with Ghandi and the Non-Violencers (if you subscribe to such a doctrine)  these feeling are part of the cycle,  you have to let it go, and take the beating to transform the whole thing into some action that is actually worth doing.

And I think this is the part that points to the need for mindfulness?awareness?inner chill?  and general personal sense of self to know when you are going over an edge... and that in whatever context that is, you are not the one to do the helping.

[Rowan Emslie]

This is great - I think a lot of us will have gone through this or a similar thought process at one time or another. Thanks!