Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a human rights activist. I'm currently working on a couple of campaigns and twice in the last week I've been accused of being too academic. Naturally, this issue concerns me because I'm about to embark on my Ph.D. but have no intention of leaving the picket line or abating my participation.
The first time it happened was when I tried to go back to working for Public Outreach. I successfully worked for Public Outreach for nine months in 2011, raising money for Amnesty International, the Red Cross and Doctors' Without Borders. Going back to the organization seemed like a sure thing since, PO in Kitchener is fundraising for Doctors' Without Borders and I can now say I've visited some of the places they've worked. Oh boy, was I wrong.
On my first day I got several phone follow ups (A phone follow up means the person wasn't ready to make the decision at the door and needed to be followed up with later) and a one time gift but failed to get anyone to sign up for monthly giving. My second day I did a little bit better, I signed one person up for monthly giving, got a higher one time gift and more phone follow ups. Unfortunately, that didn't quite cut it and so I was let go (I can go back and try again in a month though).
The feedback that I got, about why I was failing to perform, was that I was providing too much information to people at their doors and that I should have followed the PO-prepared script about malnutrition rather than the one that I wrote on my own.
The reason I prepared my own script was both because I had experienced success in the past talking about what I know well and also because the PO prepared wasn't as accurate as I would have liked it to be. The script described what we generally see in advertisements from World Vision and Christian Aid around Christmas, starving in East Africa with flied buzzing around their heads, unable to do anything to lift themselves out of poverty. This was problematic to me for two reasons, one personal and one factual. On the personal level, I've lived in East Africa and I'm pleased to say I didn't see any listless babies with flies on their faces while I was there. I did see lots of children with distended stomach happily playing or on their way to school but these children and their parents are far from being unable to take care of themselves. They do however deserve a hand up to help them overcome the health conditions that we in the West have helped to create through exploitation and inequality.
Factually, I found the script problematic because Doctor's Without Borders itself is opposed to the image of starving children. They are an organization that is committed to building the capacity of local populations so that they can treat their own sick and advocate for equal access to medicine. They do intervene in famines and in cases of war but the organization does a lot more than that too. The script that they provided wasn't only at odds with my experiences in East Africa but also with the stated goals and objectives of the organization they were trying to raise funds for.
I digress.
The second time I was accused of being too academic was when discussing my presentation at an upcoming screening of Blood in the Mobile by the Kitchener-Waterloo Just Minerals Campaign. The individual warned me to try to avoid giving too much information in my overview of the history in the conflict of the DRC because facts don't inspire people. This didn't sit very well with me given my recent experience with Public Outreach. Both events have left me feeling ineffective at what has become my main focus in life.
My feelings of inadequacy led me to vent to my new room mate, who suggested that if I wanted to feel more inspire or be more inspiring that I should watch Kony 2012. Of course she didn't know about my anger and blog posts about the film and that she had opened a mighty big bag of worms.
Still thinking about my apparent lack of inspiration I decided to follow some new faces on twitter and looked up Sverker Finnstrom who wrote one of my favorite books about Northern Uganda. While Finnstrom doesn't appear to have a twitter account I did find a tweet with an article he wrote in response to the Kony 2012.
The article outlines many of the failings of Invisible Children including the shortcomings in the assertion that the Ugandan and American armies are the heroes while the LRA are the villains, despite the fact that the U.S. and the Ugandan governments were complicit in some of the LRA's attacks or used similar strategies (The Ugandan army also uses child soldiers). The article also decries the portrayal of the LRA as a barbaric group that practices witchcraft and has no particular motivation for it's vicious campaign. If you read Finnstrom's book Living with Bad Surroundings Finnstrom provides an overview of what some of the LRA's key motivations are.
Before I really do become too academic here, my point is that the Kony 2012 campaign seemed to initially inspire people before it fell apart because of factual error and the rhetoric it used to describe all of the actors in the conflict and it's solution.
If we intend to effectively engage people in a fundraising, political or human rights campaign we need to provide them both with the facts and with some inspiration and let them make an informed decision about how they are going to be involved. From a fundraising standpoint people should receive enough accurate information to make an informed decision about where there money is going. If we don't we're either going to have disengaged funders or our funders are going to stop their donations once they realize that we're not who they thought we were.
From a human rights standpoint people who are engaging in a campaign need to have their facts straight so that when they do engage through public speaking, signing positions or whatever other way that they get involved that they're not misrepresenting the issue they're advocating for and so that they're not advocating for an inappropriate solution to the problem.
After all it was two simple facts that made me want to get involved with campaigning for Human Rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; more than five million people have died their through a cacophony of actors and motivations and the international community hasn't done anything to stop it.
If you want to read Finnstrom's Article:
http://hup.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/554/552
If you want to learn about the KW Just Minerals Campaign:
https://www.facebook.com/kwjustmineralcampaign?fref=ts
