Ed Sheeran up for offensive fundraising award, but charities defend videos
Ruairi Casey

Ref: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aid-fundraising-awards/ed-sheeran-up-for-offensive-fundraising-award-but-charities-defend-videos-idUSKBN1DY1Y1

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A charity appeal starring singer Ed Sheeran has been branded exploitative “poverty tourism” as campaigners drew up a shortlist of the year’s worst fundraising appeals, but charities say the videos have helped to raise tens of millions of dollars.

Appeals by British actors Tom Hardy and Eddie Redmayne for the UK’s Disasters Emergencies Committee (DEC) joined Sheeran as contenders for Radi-Aid’s Rusty Radiator Award for what judges deemed offensive depictions of suffering.

“We need more nuanced information about development and poverty, not oversimplified half-truths,” said Beathe Øgård, President of the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund, which runs the awards.

“(A good video) avoids exploiting the suffering of people and portrays people with dignity – with potential, talents and strengths.”

The DEC, which raises money for 13 major British charities, has defended its videos, which it said helped to raise 70 million pounds ($95 million) for East Africa and 26 million pounds ($35 million) for Yemen.
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“They’re not adverts, they’re appeals,” the DEC’s Nicola Peckett told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, pointing out that its videos are quick responses to specific humanitarian crises.

Using celebrities familiar to the public is a “tried and tested” model for fundraising and the DEC partners with news organizations like Britain’s Sky News and ITV to produce the videos in around 72 hours, she said.

“We will discuss it with our broadcast partners when we review our appeals,” she added.

Judges described Hardy’s video for the DEC’s Yemen campaign, which includes footage of emaciated children followed by an appeal for donations by the actor, as “very graphic and stereotypical”.

They said Redmayne’s appeal for East Africa “offers no political context (and is) close to poverty porn.”

Sheeran’s video for British charity Comic Relief about street children in Liberia was too focused on the singer, said Rad-Aid, and his offer to temporarily house several homeless children in a hotel was “irresponsible” and short-sighted.

“This (nomination) will serve as a constant reminder of the need to stay as relevant as possible ... and to give a voice to the people affected by the issues we care about,” said Liz Warner, CEO of Comic Relief, in a statement.

Comic Relief’s fundraising Red Nose Day in March raised over 80 million pounds ($108 million) and celebrity videos like Sheeran’s helped it reach an wider audience, the charity said.

Radi-Aid also runs a Golden Radiator Award, which recognizes fundraising videos that show deeper context and depict their subjects as more than passive recipients of aid.

Voting closed on Monday and winners will be announced on Thursday.

A note:

Thought I'd drop the above here. Too tired to explain, but for my part, the purpose is about letting Nigerians consider the responsibility we owe to individuals experiencing suffering and dehumanisation mostly informed by poverty. It's about being aware that people that post images and articles on suffering people worldwide, may be hiding under the assumptions we make in assuming that they,posters, want to highlight some hidden issue, when in actuality posters only wishes to serve their selfish purpose of scoring political points or establishing racial, national or ethnic superiority . On the other hand, even when posters of such offers are well meaning, the effect may amount to the same thing. An example is how Nigerian Bloggers and posters took an issue in Libya that has been ongoing since before the Syrian war – trafficking of migrants and the trade of migrants between those that lure migrants from their homelands and those that take over and ferry the migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe. Syrian refugees suffered this ordeal far worst than many black Africans a-times. There were many instances when Middlemen ferrying Syrians across the Mediterranean simply dumped boat loads of Syrians into the sea, causing hundreds to drown. Yet nobody further dehumanised the Syrians by comparing them to Slaves- an exceptionally loaded term. I guess some reading this may argue or tell themselves that such was the heinous acts of these traffickers in Libya and Turkey that exposing the nefarious acts far outweighs other considerations and that there must be no room for sensitivity, pride or vanity. However, when one reconsiders how Nigerians re-energised the issue and took ownership, resulting in Kenyans gleefully posting Photoshopped images of transatlantic slaves as Nigerians (in itself a trivialising of a very dark period of African history) one can see how counter-productive our bombastic approaches can become. Right now Human Trafficking continues as it did before the false positioning of Nigerians as the chief trafficked and exploited and will continue as before unabated even if Nigeria managed to stop every Nigerian from going to Libya or some other place of illegal transit to Europe. All we succeeded in doing is further dehumanise migrants and besmerge Nigeria in the process.

Ed Sheeran Comic Relief film branded 'poverty porn' by aid watchdog



https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/dec/04/ed-sheeran-comic-relief-film-poverty-porn-aid-watchdog-tom-hardy-eddie-redmayne

“Poverty porn” appeals fronted by celebrities Ed Sheeran, Tom Hardy and Eddie Redmayne are simply reinforcing white saviour stereotypes, according to an aid watchdog.

The three films, made for Comic Relief and the Disasters Emergencies Committee (DEC), which raises cash for 13 major UK aid groups including Save the Children, Oxfam and ActionAid in emergencies, were nominated for “most offensive” campaigns of 2017 by the Radi-Aid awards. The annual contest, organised by the student-run Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund (Saih), is aimed at challenging aid groups to shift away from stereotypes about people living in poverty.

The criticism followed comments by Liz Warner, the chief executive of Comic Relief, admitting the organisation had lost its creative touch and needed to be “edgy again”.

The Sheeran-fronted Comic Relief video, during which the singer offers to pay hotel costs for street children in Liberia, verged on “poverty tourism”, according to the jury. They described DEC’s Hardy-fronted Yemen appeal, which contains graphic images of unidentified starving and sick children, as “devoid of dignity” and a throwback to the 1980s, when exploitative pictures of poor people were rife. But it did offer some political context, the jury said, unlike the group’s Africa appeal, featuring Redmayne. The DEC’s Africa video was deemed “poverty porn and people waiting to be saved”. All were nominated for the Rusty Radiator award.

Beathe Øgård, president of the Saih, said the three British films showed local people as victims and was an over-simplistic, outdated way to communicate about development.

“We have been presented with these kind of images since the 1980s,” she said. “They are horrible to watch. People are so used to them that for many they reinforce that feeling of hopelessness and apathy – and even a negative view of development in that nothing is going in the right direction.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hLXAauUxPM

She acknowledged celebrities bring in donations – the DEC’s east Africa appeal raised £60m, while the Yemen appeal raised £27m – but said that they can distort the narrative, particularly when they are uninformed about the issues.

“Ed Sheeran has good intentions,” she said. “But the problem is the video is focused on Ed Sheeran as the main character. He is portrayed as the only one coming down and being able to help.”

Øgård said that in the four years the organisation had run the awards, she had seen more creative appeals, often by small organisations. Among those nominated for best fundraising film, or the Golden Radiator award , is one from War Child Holland, praised by judges as “powerful and positive”.

“It shows it is possible to play on our emotions without playing on guilt,” Øgård said. “You see a child using his imagination and playing. It is a refugee in Yemen but could be a child in Norway. It really hits a nerve.”

The film features a child in Yemen, laughing and playing with a Batman character. At one point, bombs drop and the family are forced to move, and we see “Batman” morph into the boy’s father. The words “For some children, fantasy is the only way to escape reality” flash on to the screen.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIKewZLeWU8

The Radi-Aid awards grew out of a satirical video on aid fundraising in 2012 Radi-Aid: Africa for Norway, which went viral.

Jennifer Lentfer, director of Thousand Currents, a San Francisco-based charity supporting grassroots organisations, said she had noticed a return to the use of images of so-called poverty porn among larger NGOs, as public funding is squeezed.

“It is not surprising,” said Lentfer. “Pity and shame are easy emotional levers to pull. They are proved to bring in the dollars. It’s a transactional way of looking at viewers and readers, to say, ‘I just want your money.’”

DEC’s Nicola Peckett said: “DEC is not about general poverty in Africa and the developing world. It is specifically for urgent and large-scale humanitarian crises where rapid action and funding are needed. We need to mobilise the public and the response very quickly.”


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOF1vczQDeY

Peckett said the model, where broadcasters film appeals on behalf of DEC, was a successful one, but the nominations had given the organisation food for thought.

“We will discuss it with our broadcast partners when we review our appeals,” she said.

Warner, at Comic Relief said its nomination would serve as a “constant reminder of the need to stay as relevant as possible going forwards and to give a voice to the people affected by the issues we care about”.

“If we do win this award, I would still like to say thank you to the artists whose support means we have reached mass audiences and raised vital funds for life-changing projects in the UK and around the world,” she said.

The public poll for the Golden Radiator and Rusty Radiator awards closes on the 4 December and winners will be announced on 7 Dec.