video – STOPOVER

Development Goals and the Cool Factor

When you think about it, we all want to be cool. Women wear painful high heels to look good, men wrap a noose (tie) around our neck to feel powerful. Fashion trumps comfort when we head out on the town. We upgrade our phone, not because it is broken but because it is a generation behind the latest and greatest. That is why your development goals also need to be super-cool.

We all know it is somewhat ridiculous, vain and self-centred … and totally human. This is a universal feeling for everyone on the planet. That everyone, also includes the materially poor.

That is why international aid programs that allow people to feel cool – work a lot better than those that just pay attention to a problem.

Why Cool Matters (a lot)

Programs are started every day in places where there is perpetual poverty. They might be started by well-meaning outsiders who see the horrible states of infection of malaria, or STIs and want to change the terrible stats of unemployment.

Even as outsiders, we KNOW these are the major issues that the community wants to face.

But, when we jump in gung-ho-style with our great solutions, we are shocked by the lack of interest.

Local people know that the problem exists, they might even agree with your solution, but it is frustrating to find out that people won’t just quickly change everything just because you told them to.

That’s when we can blame the people.

We can focus on the people who are not doing what we say they should do. We grow mad at how they are not contributing to the success of our program. Unchecked, this can lead to a racist sense of superiority. “My development goals would have totally worked if they had just listened to me!”

It is easy to forget that the problem may be more complex than our simple solution. An example might be a lot closer (and uncomfortable) than you think.

In fact, we deal with the exact same issue at home.

A human-sized problem

At home we also have serious problems. To name a few, obesity, depression, heart disease and diabetes are all fine examples.

We also have unlimited information to cure those problems.

Fashion magazines and Hollywood celebrities promise miracle cures
Your doctor will always advise you to try and lose that 20 lbs …
Entire forests have been harvested to write up peer-reviewed studies about better nutrition.

There is no lack of information about the problem and what we need to do.

The Solution is not the Solution

In the end, everyone knows we should “eat less and exercise more” and many (not all) of our health problems would disappear overnight.

But knowing the solution and doing the solution are different things

Shame and guilt doesn’t work to get people to change, it is hard to keep motivated to eat less and exercise more

So where does it work?

If you convince people to get together in a cool new gym. When you make it a club, a place to meet friends and listen to good music. When you gather people together in community … something interesting happens.

The side-effect is that by making it fun to gather together, you can watch a bunch of those health problems start to disappear.

People say they want to lose weight and be healthy, but they are much more interested in being part of movement and a community.

To be in the ‘in-group’.

If you want your development goals to work … don’t forget to be cool.

Interested? Intrigued? I was inspired by this article and you might want to check it out: https://medium.com/…/turning-maslow-s-hierarchy-on-its-head…

Think that the guy in post pic looks super fly? I bet you will like this short 5 min documentary by Guiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2O5yfw20Yg

Do you think that fashion impacts the success of your development goals or not?

Bob Geldof is Pimping the Poor.

“Do they know it’s Christmas?” That is the lyric of the Bob Geldof song. The song he sang with a bunch of celebrities 30 years during the BandAid concert to raise funds and awareness about starving people in Africa. He is trying to do it again for Ebola but this time lots of people are telling him that he should know better than pimping the poor.

In 1984 Bob Geldof decided to tell people about one of the greatest disasters of his time. The famine in Ethiopia was staggering and countless people were dying. Bob raised an amazing amount of money for a problem that the world was trying hard to ignore. I have to heartily applaud him.

The problem is that he is trying to do it again.

Why is this a problem? There is still a need. Poverty and disease are still problems. The West/North/Developed world still has no clue about Africa and needs to be made aware (my recent experiment proved that point)

Bob you asked if Africans know it is Christmas?

Coptic Christians in Egypt (an African nation) recall that Jesus spent his first two birthdays in Africa. There are 2.5 times more Christians in Nigeria alone than the entire population of Canada. In fact, the majority religion of many African nations is Christianity. I dare say that they all know about Christmas. Bob, the song sure sounds condescending.

“where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow, do they know it’s Christmas at all?”

Bob I know you didn’t start BandAid to educate Africans about December 25 on the calendar. You sang the song to collect money for a country of starving people and you succeeded. Shouldn’t I just thank you and move on? So much good came out of it!

A lot has changed since that first song.

What is the last image you remember from a charity that works with the poor? If they work in Africa it might be a poor black kid and his mother in front of a dirty hovel of a house. A white person stands there with a gift in hand and the child’s face lights up with a tremendous smile.

The irony is that donors give a lot of money because of those kind of pictures. Aid agencies know this and take more of those kinds of pictures. This ultimately means they make money from the exploitation of children and women.

Mr. Geldof, it is called poverty porn.

Or pimping the poor. And as offensive as those terms sound, it is even more offensive to be made to feel like you are the needy subject of pity. An agency in Norway gives ‘awards‘ out to the worst offenders of this kind of advertising. We need to stop this kind of thinking.

Mr. Geldof, the world has changed since you first sang that song. Aid work has come a long way. Development workers have tried to get rid of the earlier paternalism that lead them to fixing other people. Some people have discovered that people in Africa are not a single faceless needy horde. I appreciate the first time you sang us the song, but it is time for a change.

Pimpin’ ain’t easy.

It is really easy is to criticize others. I find it a lot easier to find fault with someone else than to create something better. Bob, I don’t want to be your critic because it is the boring way to avoid the adventure of getting involved. I don’t ever want to stand by and take shots, or worse, make snide comments about you in a poorly read blog.

I also don’t have your ability to call even one artist, let alone pull an international cadre of superstars together. I don’t have anyone’s phone numbers. But Bob, I do think you still could do something that might make a real difference. Here is my unsolicited advice.

How to Stop Pimping the Poor

Bob Geldof if this ever reaches you, I think your motive is probably right but you need to reconsider your method. Think about your own life. At your personal poorest would you have wanted to be described as a “victim of poverty” or would you rather be seen as an “aspiring talented musician”? The same goes for everyone. Don’t describe people by what they don’t have or don’t know, rather describe them by what they hope to be.

If you wouldn’t want it said about yourself and your kids don’t say it about African mothers and fathers and their kids.

Pull off the BandAid fast (it hurts less) and use the old song but co-opt it. Be subversive. Reverse the storyline.
Show Africans in positions of power and have them sing as ridiculous a song to all of your celebrities.
Have fun with the fact that the 30-year-old song is maudlin tripe.
Let everyone know you are in on the joke.
… and yes, please raise a tonne of money, we need you to use the drawing power of your A-list celebrity friends. I will be first in line to donate.

In short. Please Exploit the song. Not the Africans.

Thanks for listening Bob.

If you could talk to Bob Geldof, what creative advice would you give him?

Mark Crocker

How Steve Sold a Smokeless Stove That No One Knew They Needed

Sustainability is one of those buzz-words. It is right up there with gender-balance and environment. That’s the problem.It means that everyone uses the word on every single proposal. Some projects should never be intended to be sustainable at all (like all disaster relief projects). Still, sustainable language is rammed into proposals.

The alternative is donor-funding suicide.

A Test for Sustainability — The Test for Sustainability. Photo Credit: State Farm via Compfight cc

How do you know if something will actually last longer than your attention on this post? I like to use the crisis test.

Simply put, “If I get hit by a flaming meteor (or bus), does the project die with me?”

Stay with me, I have a story to tell. (more…)

89 reasons why you think about poverty the way you do

When I think of living out in the country, farm-life, the picture that comes to mind is of “Anne of Green Gables” and “Little House on the Prarie”. Those were the shows I watched as a kid. Sod-busters. Barn-raising. Ice cream socials and square dancing.

So when I think of village life I think of rustic, hard-working strapping men and women who may be poor, but by using their few resources they pull themselves up by hard work and gumption.

If there are any problems, they were solved in about 22 minutes – or 44 if it was a two part episode.

The first time I walked into an African village my perspective of the quaint village shifted.

Some things are similar.

A village in Africa is also filled with hard working men and women.

They are real people with full lives. They wake up everyday and get the job done. But the village there is very different than the village I learned about on TV. In a developing country, living in a village usually means you are poor.

Nothing wrong with being poor of course, but most people don’t want to stay that way.

What picture comes to your mind when you think village?

Pictures stick with us, sometimes for decades. For me it was the first time I went to Ethiopia, I knew the famine was long over, but those images during the 80’s were in my head. Of course that wasn’t the reality anymore when I went and so my perspective had to change.

How many pictures of Africa do you think you have seen? How many pictures of aid work? We have all seen 10’s of thousands of images of international aid workers.

What story do they tell?

I searched the web for pictures of people doing aid work and put 89 of those images together into this short slide show. Individually, each of the pictures probably tell a version of a story that is strangely different when you take them all together.

a perspective that was probably not intended …

Here is my suggestion. Watch the video and ask yourself a question:

What is the story that is being told through this collection of pictures?

Mark Crocker

How a pile of compost taught this man’s wife how to write her name

I drove into the southern mountains of Haiti in the back of a Toyota Landcruiser, the vehicle used by most relief agencies. The sideways bench seats, as uncomfortable as they always are, still perfect for bringing us up into the hills. We arrived in Duchity, where over a few days with our partners from pcH we met with many farmers.

The people in these hills have farmed forever. As outsiders, we were there to support their vision for two major goals.

1. Increased production, also known in less technical terms as “growing more food” – which means more to eat and more to sell.

2. The creation of a co-op. In nerdy MBA or development speak it’s called “improving the value chain”. Co-ops allow people to buy seed in bulk, share tools to reduce costs, and ship product in larger quantities.

The question was “did it work”?

(more…)

How to tell the story of poverty without exploiting poor people … again

A few years ago I talked with a person who wanted to volunteer overseas. As she spoke she gushed about her love for the poor in Africa, and at one point actually said these words, “I just love those chocolate babies!” I am not joking. Those words actually came out of her mouth. She meant it in love and compassion. Her heart was in it, but her words were a bit insane.

(more…)

3 secret rules to learn a new language quickly and easily.

I once sat with a guy in Guatemala. For over 30 minutes we talked about our lives, our families, where we came from and where we were going. The funny thing is that we didn’t actually speak each other’s language! He spoke Spanish, and I didn’t.

How do you learn a foreign language?

Photo Credit: tobyct via Compfight cc

Ever wonder why some people seem to learn a language quickly? They seem to have it so easy. Do you wish you had their skills? Here are the secrets: (more…)

I took my wife to the killing fields for our honeymoon. Never again.

I am obviously a born romantic. Where else but the Cambodian killing fields during our honeymoon? It was an incredible place to be. Neglected. Crowded. And alone. All at the same time.

In order to process my feelings I put together this video compiled from the photos and video that Supriya and I took in our visit to the Cambodia killing fields in February.

CAUTION: disturbing content

A horrific tragedy and a senseless loss. I only wish that genocides such as the Cambodia killing fields was not such a common event.

Mark Crocker