If you have followed Duckrabbit over the last couple of years you will no doubt know they produce an excellent blog and exceptional multi-media work. However, their recent work for MSF and Oxfam sits some what uncomfortably with the position they often seem to support. Advocates for the voice of those in the developing world to be at the forefront of audio-visual communications, these voices are conspicuously absent from their most recent work. In both the pieces for MSF and Oxfam we predominantly hear from white Westerners who can be described to differing degrees as outsiders. All others are passive receivers of their largesse. We hear very little from those actually from the countries where these problems exist, let alone those who suffer. The claim that the work Duckrabbit did for Oxfam is unique because it is unscripted seems to ignore whose voice is included and whose is absent.

Now, to be fair, both sets of ads are aimed at raising funds in the UK. They are aimed at a UK audience with a specific objective in mind – that they motivate people to give money. The question is – does this mean the voices of the rights holders should be absent? Or more to the point – in order to better understand the problems and balance the relationships between the developed and developing world should we not have voices from both sides represented? I feel uneasy writing this as I admire the folks at Duckrabbit and consider them a progressive force in this field. But feel the need to ask these questions given the work they have produced recently. I welcome their response and hope it contributes to the healthy debate they themselves have fostered so well through their blog.

UPDATE: You can read an initial response from Peter at Duckrabbit here.

Save the Children released research this week that claims ‘aid works’. This appears to be more than an exercise in accountability or impact assessment. This looks like the defense of aid in the face of a recession, negative press and a changing world. Part of the response from Save the Children is the video above. It is a film of two halves. Firstly, it gives us old school skeletal infant shots (and even chimes in with images from the Ethiopian famine of the 1980′s and a shot of the crowd at LiveAid from 1985, in case we’ve forgotten how we gave money in the past). Image after image of mainly poor children from the African continent. In the second half we get a up to date animation about how many lives UK aid could save in the next four years. The narrator tips his hat to economic investment and industry as drives to reduce poverty, but throughout we are given a rather retro vision of both Africa and development. We never see a bustling city. Modernity (except medical appliances and transportation bringing aid) is conspicuously absent. We don’t hear how several countries in Africa and Asia now have healthy economic growth rates and growing middle classes. Nor do we hear anything about what people in developing countries are doing themselves to reduce poverty. Not that Save the Children should be painting an overly rosy picture. Why would they if they feel under attack. But I can’t help feel that the video represents a broader failure of imagination in how we represent humanitarian assistance. The narrow picture presented tries to address what is perceived as ‘compassion fatigue’ (or at least the threat of a reduction in donations – whether that is due to a reduction in compassion or a growing conviction that aid is generally wasted is debatable). Halfway through we get a good dose of shock therapy, that all this good work could be undone ‘in the blink of an eye’. But the world has changed and I suspect few are now won over by such melodrama.

Mobile phone repair shop, Kolkata. Copyright Rob Godden

The Guardian newspaper (UK) continues its Flickr photo projects in 2012 with this interesting challenge. Only open to those residing in developing countries, they are asking people to document one theme over the coming year. Whether education, farming, business or politics – they want people to shoot a series of images regularly over the year to tell an in-depth and evolving story.

Details can be found here. You can check out the Guardian Flickr group here to see what has already been posted. Questions can be submitted either via Flickr or to development@guardian.co.uk.

Glengarry Glen Ross, adapted from a play by David Mamet, tells two days in the lives of four salesmen and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a representative, Blake, to “motivate” them. Blake, among a series of verbal abuse on the men, announces that only the top two sellers will stay in the company and the rest of them will be fired.

Here is the scene:

Here is Oxfam America’s interpretation:

I imagine that the intention of the video was not only to create surprise on the audience through the script but also to make a link with the original film. In such a way, the message will be made more powerful through its references.

Does it work in this sense? I have some doubts. It is well filmed and staged and obviously it refers to a film which had an excellent casting (Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris and  Alec Balwing among others) and which received good reviews. But, do you know the film? I did not. Do the receptors of the campaing know the film? Probably not, it seems that in America it did not have commercial success.

So, was it worthy to recreate the whole scene – and obviously invest the money- to refer to a film that probably very few people have seen? And if they do not make the connection to the original film, will they able to stand the shouting to get the message and to make sense of it?

(Many thanks to Shani Orgad for letting me know about these two videos)

I came across Sophie Gerrard’s work a couple of weeks back when the BBC featured her latest piece on the Akhand Jyoti Eye hospital in Bihar. It is beautiful, positive and inspiring. It does not linger on the negative nor over dramatize the issue. Other work, like ‘The Right to Life’ on maternal health in India, strike a similar tone and are in stark contrast to other rather shrill pieces of work out there in NGO-ville. Take a look at her site here.

Lets start with what may be a familiar economics experiment called ‘The Ultimatum Game.’ For those unfamiliar with the game it goes like this; two people are paired and one is given $10. This person (the proposer) gets to decide how the money is split between the two of them. The second person (the responder) gets to accept or reject the offer. If the offer is accepted each gets to keep their respective amounts. If rejected no one gets anything.

What tends to happen is that the proposer, rather than offer a small amount (say $1) and pocket the rest, usually offers close to 50%. What they understand is that if they offer a low amount the responder, rather than cut their losses and take what ever is offered (after all, anything better than $0 is a win for them), they punish the proposer by rejecting ‘unfair’ amounts. In some ways this appears illogical – the responder should take what ever is on offer. But that inner sense of what is ‘right’ is vital to social interactions. The game taps into a whole load of sympathetic human instincts based on us being a social animal. It is also worth noting at this point that this experiment gets the same results where ever it is conducted, but it Germany, Japan or Indonesia.

A variation on ‘The Ultimatum Game’ is ‘The Dictator Game.’ Here the set up is the same except the proposer dictates how much the responder will get. Yet even here the proposer ‘dictator’ tends to give away around 30% of the $10. Even when they don’t need to be generous they are. That is unless the game is changed slightly. In the first two versions of the game both proposer and responder have sat opposite each other. The third variation is set up like ‘The Dictator Game’ but with the proposer ‘dictator’ in a separate room to the responder. In this set up the dictator offers far smaller amounts to the responder. It is all in the distance. The lack of interaction with the person you are screwing, the isolation from those who suffer from your greed, makes us insensitive (which may do some way to explaning the move of the Burmese captial to Naypyidaw).

Here is another experiment. People in this experiment are asked a simple question – ‘How much would you be willing to donate to a charitable cause?’ It was found that when shown a photo of a malnourished Malawian child the average donation was $2.50. However, when given a wealth of statistics on the scale of malnutrition in Malawi, its impact on millions of children and the mortality rate (rather than the photo), people gave 50% less. One photo and an individual tragic story generated double the amount of money compared to the information presenting the true scope of the problem. The stats just didn’t tap into the innate sympathetic parts of our brain.

So, what does all this have to do with visual media and social activism? Well, it goes back to a point I and many others have made regarding bridging the empathetic gap. Usually, this is raised in reference to mobilising people to take action e.g. getting the public to write to MPs etc. But what ‘The Dictator Game’ shows us is that our primary target should be those in power. The trouble is we are showing them the wrong things. We tend to target them with detailed, legalistic, scientific research reports, briefings or submissions. We stand up in UN forums or government lobbying meetings and present ‘serious’ information. We enter into a particular form of information exchange that often deliberately excludes individual stories and predominantly uses text rather than images. But what this does is to actually allow those in power to avoid having to deal emotionally with the issues. They get the cold stats and can respond in a cold way. Rather than ‘speaking truth to power’ we should be ‘showing individual truths to power.’ What needs reinforcing is their empathetic link to those they serve, their constituents. Stats are for technocrats to implement, individual visual stories win hearts (or more accurately, fire the sympathetic regions of our brains). That is not to say good solid research is not important (you need to show context and breadeth of impact), but by relying solely on this type of communication we are failing to understand how the mind works. For example, picture this. An NGO rep stands up at the UN Human Rights Council and reads out a statement about how hundreds, if not thousands, were killed due to the Sri Lankan army shelling hospitals in its offensive against the LTTE in 2009. Now imagine instead of them reading out the statement they show you footage of this, not just the carnage but interviews with the families who survived, who lost their wives, husbands and children. The impact, emotions and outrage in that room would, I believe, be entirely different. That is why the C4 documentary ‘Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields‘ caused such a storm and the governemnt made such efforts to rebut and discredit the footage.

Another lesson is what most NGOs, especially development organisations, knew all along. The ‘poster child’, no matter what political or ideological problems we may have with it, works. That is not to excuse the lazy trotting out of the emaciated mother and child every time a famine is declared. But it does demonstrate that people respond to human stories, at least in the immediate sense in that they give money. What we need to work on is getting less desperate stories to people about the lives of those less fortunate before things reach these extremes. We need stories that people can empathise with, not based on tragedy but identity. These need to shun stereotypes, but to do that NGOs need to take risks, be innovative and not be afraid to show the nuisances of life in the places they work e.g. its not all tragedy, that in fact people have a good time and are getting on with their lives like we all try to do. Stories that put us across the table to those in need in order that we give a fair response rather than isolate us further.

Projects like those shown here run by Greenpeace are not going to address the state’s failure to keep up with the power demand of the country. The resulting economic impact of such a huge short fall of electricity, or for that matter the slow pace in connecting remote communities outside major urban centres (or informal settlements within) will not be dented by solar power running a few lamps or computers. However, for the communities they may make all the difference in being able to study or keeping produce fresh for retail. The solar lamp scheme pictured by Greene – where members of the Kibera Community Youth Programme (KCYP) were trained in assembling solar powered lamps is the type of initiative Greenpeace should be spending its time promoting (rather than its boys-with-toys adventure activism nonsense).

Now, lets hope there is enough power for me to watch England vs. India in the Cricket World Cup this afternoon…

JOHN MACCAULEY, 20. John was 10 years old when he made the staggering decision to leave his family and join ‘The House of Jesus for the Disabled’ – a community of around 50 disabled men and women that life on a small plot of land in the middle of Freetown. As a child he would play with the children in this community, and as a result of the friendships he forged he decided that he would like to dedicate his life to helping them. He was the first ‘healthy’ to join the ‘The House of Jesus’, and is now an invaluable member of it. He spends his days there repairing wheelchairs and making new ones out of old prams. John is also an adept tailor, and teaches many in the community this skill. The ethos of ‘The House of Jesus’ is to move away from a culture of dependency, and to move towards a level of self-sufficiency. By learning certain skills, such as tailoring, they can earn an income to support themselves and their families, instead of being completely reliant on aid and the generosity of others.

Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, with terrible rates of infant mortality and one of the lowest life expectancies in Africa.  But these stark statistics should not define the region, or its people. I could have so easily turned my lens to the inhabitants of Kroo Bay (one of the worst slums in the world), but that would have been too easy, and too reductive a view of Sierra Leone.

‘This is the first time in over 20 years that I have studied. I work very hard, but I don’t mind because I love what we learn here…….one day I would like to set up my own salon’. HALIMATU KADIA CONTEH, 34.

Ultimately I feel very ambivalent about the kind of ‘shoot and run’ tactics employed by some photographers that sees them profit from someone else’s hardship. I also question how helpful these snapshot images are in promoting the cause of LEDCs. I feel that we are so often bombarded with media images of poverty that we have become almost desensitised to such sights.  I think it’s now time we start to represent those in the third world as individuals, not as victims.  Perhaps this change of tact could have a profound effect on the way we view the developing world, and the lives of the people that live there.

“Political tolerance, further education and civil liberties – without these things our country cannot move forward." Andrew Koromah brought the concept of independent journalism to Sierra Leone. In the early 1990’s he set-up Kiss FM and Sky Radio, the country’s first independent radio stations. These were instrumental in linking Sierra Leone throughout the civil war, and importantly they gave each faction a public voice during the conflict. His efforts have been recognised internationally, and he has won a number of awards including the Knight Press Fellowship from the International Centre of Journalism in Washington. Andrew tirelessly ploughs all his energies into the development of Sierra Leone, whether it is the creation of community radio stations, or the lobbying of government for the ratification of treaties, including the Convention of the Rights of Children. “Sierra Leone is still a deeply polarized country... we need to cultivate a greater level of unification in order to progress.” ANDREW KROMAH, 53.

This at least was my aim – and so I set out to photograph and interview as broad a cross section of Sierra Leonean society as possible. I met everyone from musicians to village chiefs, civil servants to dollar boys, hairdressers to taxi drivers, soldiers to schoolgirls.  Consequently I came away with a very rich understanding of what Sierra Leone is like today, and I can tell you that it is a country that is characterised by so much more than its poverty and sad history. It has fully moved on from the civil war that defines it in so many people’s imaginations, and it now stands as a nation steeped in optimism and hope.  The country still has a long way to go, but if the opportunities on offer could match the motivation of its people, then Sierra Leone would be positively thriving by now. As it stands there is a dearth of employment in the country. Aid still floods in, a lot of which is channelled into education, but without jobs this education is not capitalised on.

“What do I love about this country? Take a look around you...what’s not to love? MARLENA BANDU, 29.

Today Sierra Leone has a huge amount to offer; it’s rich in minerals, has a climate perfectly suited to agriculture and has some of the most beautiful beaches in Africa. What Sierra Leone would now benefit from alongside aid is foreign investment, better infrastructure and sustainable tourism.  All of this would provide much sought after jobs, which in turn would bolster the economy and allow Sierra Leone to flourish independently of aid. However these things will not start to happen until outdated perceptions of the country are changed.  It is my hope that this project has gone some way to doing this.

Sophia Spring

To see the full set of photos and stories go here.

Check out AidWatch for more on this initiative.

Nepal – Life Cycles by Robert Godden | Make Your Own Book

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Best

Rob