Be About It...

Response to Tory Shepherd's article on ThePunch.

Oh Tory.

You call bullshit… let me start this with three words as well.

Please call me.

Three little, simple words, written by my friend and colleague from an ocean and a continent away.  In under 10 seconds, he had posted a message to me on Facebook and I had replied and made contact by phone.

If this doesn’t rank as one of the most boring stories ever published, I’d be surprised.

And yet this is an extraordinary leap in technological capability, which even a decade ago was not so simple, which 15 years ago was definitely more complicated, more convoluted, far more frustrating and difficult a task.

My friend was in Iligan, Philippines.  A tropical storm had hit the islands and destroyed the home base of our Philippine branch of the not for profit we run.  It had also, tragically, destroyed his home village.

In a very short timeframe, we managed to coordinate a funds transfer, donation requests and processing, clothing and supplies collected and shipped, and an international campaign for relief donations.

This kind of quick, efficient movement of people and cash and goods was near unthinkable when I first began working in International Development.  I am constantly surprised by how much the world and therefore the industry has changed.

The KONY2012 video is a prime example of this.  If you haven’t seen the video as yet, you will.

Wonderfully presented, it’s a follow up to the Invisible Children documentary of a couple of years ago.  It’s a tragic, sad, disturbing reflection of how cruel and callous humans can be, yet it’s also driving hundreds of thousands of people around the world to act in a way which the veterans of development marketing and communications are still having a hard time processing.

Let’s be clear though; the video isn’t suggesting a cure for cancer, eradicating poverty or eliminating famine; it is shining the spotlight on an indicted war criminal who continues to spread hate and force children into unspeakable horrors.  It is precisely for this narrow scope that the video, the campaign and by association the organization is receiving quite a lot of criticism.  Even more criticism has been thrown around due to the reports that of the funds generated by Invisible Children, only 31% is spent on programs and charity work, while the rest is distributed between salaries and film making.

It was only a few days ago that this very blog examined how often and aggressively charities campaign for the same pot of cash, in the process spending a huge proportion of their budgets on contractors, salaries and marketing.  It’s not a great situation, and people are understandably frustrated at it.

Yet here we are, with a world filled with problems and issues which need fixing and addressing, and an increasingly skeptical and bitter public, where every now and again, in spite of that same skepticism and plenty of cynicism about the power of ideas, movements emerge which motivate, invigorate and challenge the public, fuelling them into action.  We’ve had the Make Poverty History Campaign, Occupy Wall Street, and now Kony2012, to name just 3 in the last few years.

I can hear Erick eagerly typing away at his first draft, chiding me for the irrelevance of those campaigns to actual change.  Steady, Erick, give me another few moments.

What have those campaigns achieved?

The Millenium Development Goals.  That’s an entire community of countries committing to eradicating extreme poverty by 2015.  The result?  The halving of world poverty.  HALF.   Increased access to health, generations of women being given rights and freedoms they never dreamed of, children getting the flu and living to tell the tale, hundreds of thousands of families no longer needing to beg and steal just to have enough to eat every day.

What about Occupy Wall Street?  How does the global shift towards re-balancing the world’s financial systems to avoid the hidden 3^rd-world effect in developed countries, culminating in a direct reference at the US State of the Union speech?

And what of KONY2012?  How can that possibly effect any change?

I can’t answer that with any real certainty, but what I can promise is that focus on the issues that matter, no matter how close or how far, always have positive effects.  It’s easy to criticize, easy to point our shortcomings, and to a great extent, that kind of thing is necessary in order to keep the level of accountability and sense of purpose on the straight and narrow.  Yes, 31% of all donations going to programs is not much.  Yet the videos that organization have made have spurred myself and so many like me to push even harder than we ever have for others to sit up and take notice of the atrocities that still exist in the world, that still need to be changed.

You’ve asked all kinds of great questions such as what happens when you depose a cult leader like Kony? What happens next?  Yet you’ve drawn a conclusion that misses the point entirely; just because the path ahead is difficult, just because we don’t know for certain what comes next, does not mean that we don’t do what is right.  We send our bravest and noblest to heart of the bushfires, we hop in our vans and trucks and drive to flood affected areas, we send our troops, our volunteers, our experts, our young men and women, our very best and most committed to every corner of our own country, to every land surrounding us, to every deep corner of conflict and chaos not because we have a perfect, all-encompassing solution to the problems facing our world, but because it is the right thing to do.

The floods and fires and conflicts and famine will never be changed by 1 day or night or week of action.  They are issues and problems we have been facing and may well continue to face forever, yet we persist because we know that even that day’s efforts count for something.

The attention created by KONY2012 has brought all of these issues to the public consciousness.  I praise that.  I revel in that.  I accept and encourage that to the greatest extent I can.  Because yes, calling for greater resources to capture Kony may not make the war end, but neither you or I know that for sure.  What we do know is that a person is committing wrong, and that needs to be addressed.

We don’t stop arresting people for crimes just because crimes still occur even though we have a police force.  We don’t stop putting out bushfires even though they happen every year or so.  We don’t stop giving assistance to those affected by the floods just because that won’t prevent another flood.

To think that the KONY2012 campaign is the only piece of international aid and development occurring in the world, absent of all of the thousands of other not for profits and NGOs out there working hard to permanently eradicate poverty and war and famine and disease and corruption is not just naïve, it’s willfully ignorant.

Don’t just talk about it, be about it.

UPDATE:

• lots of great commentary out there, including http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/03/07/stop-kony-yes-but-dont-stop-asking-questions/
• Just as an aside, I've been speaking for quite some time about the Global Poverty Project and the great message they're spreading about the attainability of the eradication of extreme poverty, as well as the practical, tangible things individuals can do to address a lot of the inequalities in the world.  Hope more people see those presentations.
• For the record: the Big Bang Ballers, of which I am CEO, limits its administration, marketing and public relations costs to only 7% max of our annual budget.  No one, not myself, not the Board of Management members, not our 80+ permanent volunteers worldwide, are paid a cent for what we do.

UPDATE 2:

My good friend Riaz has a great take on the issue, reprinted with his permission:

no doubt the campaign has been effective in creating awareness and sparking a semblance of debate. and if their budgets are any indication, they've certainly achieved their objectives quite sensationally.
 however, my views are probably more closely aligned with this blogger http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/03/07/stop-kony-yes-but-dont-stop-asking-questions/ insomuch that the broader issues have been neglected and the clear political agenda being largely ignored.
 addressing it's effectiveness, its the nature of these high gloss, low substance pieces that they are briefly consumed then discarded. i suspect those who are truly effected by it, will no doubt already have some awareness of the plight of africa and be involved in some form of humanitarian efforts already. much of the rest will happily post it on fb, comment, feel like they've been a part of something big, then ultimately return to modus operandi.
 of those that will actually be motivated to do something, this campaign will no doubt generate a substantial bump in donations for IC, and i dare say to the detriment of ngo's who allocate more than 30% of their budget to the grassroots. my only hope is that this campaign brings further awareness to other more 'worthy' organisations out there, *cough* Big Bang Ballers ;) citing the phillipine example in your blog, the campaign was clear, the funding direct, the action focused and immediate, and the consequence positive and hopefully lasting. further, the success of the occupy wall street campaign was likely the result of direct effect. meaning the impact on campaigners were palatable, either socially, ethically or financially, which spurred them to take action.
 as for instigating an interventionist policy. well we all know the outcomes of such military campaigns. besides, africa has their own incompetent african union as a forum to intervene. so i would much rather the solutions, corruption and military posturing come from within. we seem to forget that africa is a prosperous continent able to sustain itself. however, as is the way with much of the world, resources are allocated disproportionately, so by militarily displacing one despot with another we will not seed a resolution. instead, access to education, health care and infrastructure goes a long way to empowering a people, who will enact this change themselves. Just as a segway, how's that homelessness, crime and corruption and financial class system going in the US.
 overall the campaign stands out as a beacon to organisations hoping to create awareness and debate. their intent is certainly good (though i'd love to cast my eyes over their sponsor list), however they fail in disclosure and relevance. the hope is that it does provide the leverage to open people's eyes to other organisations fighting the good fight and in need of financial assistance, as well giving people a forum to debate the issue with empathy.

 Thank you Riaz.  A key part of that commentary was " i suspect those who are truly effected by it, will no doubt already have some awareness of the plight of africa and be involved in some form of humanitarian efforts already. much of the rest will happily post it on fb, comment, feel like they've been a part of something big, then ultimately return to modus operandi."  I share that concern wholeheartedly.

Riaz and I may be on different sides sentimentally of the Kony campaign, however we can find areas of agreement on the issue.  The debate over the campaign today is proving to be quite divisive, however as with so many issues, it doesn't take much to see the validity of the other side's concerns.

In the interest of full disclosure, Riaz has previously volunteered for the Big Bang Ballers, and I consider him not just a friend, but one of the most well-rounded people I know.