A woman helped by SOS Children in Ethiopia - Brother and sister from an SOS Children's Village
Ann Speak is a Canadian studying in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Recently, she visited the SOS Children’s Village in Gode, Ethiopia, where SOS Children is conducting relief efforts in the current famine which has hit East Africa.
- “Dispatches from Ethiopia: Helping the people of Gode”
-
Ann Speak, SOS Children Blogger
Ann Speak is a Canadian studying in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Recently, she visited the SOS Children’s Village in Gode, Ethiopia, where SOS Children is conducting relief efforts in the current famine which has hit East Africa.
"Hungry people from the surrounding community regularly arrive at the SOS Children’s Village gate asking for food. SOS Children give whatever leftover food they can which is appreciated. Sometimes animals find their way through the fence to graze on anything green they can find.
For those outside of the SOS Village, SOS Children provide 25k of rice and 3 litres of oil which help to supplement the diet of some local families. This food package can last about a month and in some cases, truly saved lives.
For people in Gode and the surrounding area, families are vulnerable due to extreme poverty. Eking out a living in a drought stricken area means little food, medicine and no money for housing or school. SOS Children helped vulnerable families with small amounts of money which improved the health and diet of children. All children in vulnerable families received school fees and uniforms to attend school – many for the first time. These children are proudly displaying their new school uniforms thanks to SOS assistance
In a community with a collapsing economy, housing is the last things a family will spend money on - the need for food and water take priority. An outreach programme of SOS Children identified people suffering due to poor housing and helped rebuild basic structures.
This is the most disturbing story I encountered – while SOS Children had provided this woman (photo above, left) a great service, she had clearly paid a high price over the years from malnourishment, illness, hunger and thirst – this woman is only 60 years old – two years older than me. She lives in a neighbouring farming community and has eight children living with her. Before, they were farmers, but due to the clogged irrigation system, the community has suffered the loss of their traditional livelihood.
Even if the rains keep up, it will be several months before they can harvest and begin feeding themselves again. It is due to the timely delivery of food supplements that they are still alive today. They don’t know what they will do if they don’t have any more food aid in the coming months – this is what some call the green famine – the crops are growing but not ready to be harvested."
Learn more about SOS Children’s Emergency Relief Programme in Ethiopia.
- "Is it better to portray hope, not hopelessness?”
-
Emma Tallamy, Marketing Projects Manager, SOS Children UK
The BBC News recently ran an article about possible changes in the laws on assisted suicide, an issue that is emotionally charged and contentious, with such serious consequences were the law to change.
Many with experience of dealing with the issue have put their name behind or against the proposed changes, depending on their point of view.
One such person is Baroness Jane Campbell, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy. She is one of the founders of Not Dead Yet, a network of disabled people in the UK who, as they put it, ‘oppose the legalised killing of disabled people’. The network believes that ‘if we give in to the demand to assist in a suicide we are reinforcing attitudes that say that the lives of disabled people are not worth living’. And in a nicely succinct sound bite, Baroness Campbell is concerned that a change in the law would send out a message of ‘hopelessness, not hope’.
Whilst they are two very different issues, that some might say are unrelated, this BBC News article got me thinking again about the question of portraying ‘hope’ over ‘hopelessness’ in international development charity marketing.
I am under no illusion that most people who think of international development charity marketing in general would not associate it with the portrayal of ‘hope’. Everyone knows the image of the starving African child; belly swollen and plagued by flies. The images may have become slightly less graphic since the ‘80s, but, and especially in the lead up to Christmas, charities are still using images of ‘hopelessness’ to, in my opinion, guilt trip viewers into becoming donors.
Are there many other industries in which marketers are faced with the choice of whether to use tactics that are at such polar opposites as ‘hope’ or ‘hopelessness’?
Long before I was employed by the charity, SOS Children made a decision to only portray images of children who were, as such, the ‘end product’ of our care. In great contrast to many of our competitors, images of happy, healthy, well clothed, safe and loved children grace all of our materials. Maybe it’s naive, but we hope that our portrayal of these children, with their smiling faces, is evidence enough of the good that can be done by becoming a child sponsor. We hope that it is enough to engage people and make them think about sponsoring a child who is not yet so loved and cared for. Perhaps, in the long run, these images will change people’s perception of the developing world and help them to see that there is hope, not just hopelessness.
Share: