NPR: What Do African Aid Recipients Think of Charity Ads?

From NPR yesterday:

It’s a question that charities often debate: How should their fund-raising ads portray the people they’re trying to help?  If the ads display graphic human suffering to elicit donations, they run the risk of exploiting the subjects or making them look helpless.  If the ads are more upbeat — showing aid recipients who are smiling, for example — they may ignore the subject’s strife and put the power to transform the subject’s life in the hands of rich, Western donors.  While this dilemma is often discussed among charity professionals, the debate hasn’t always included the people in the images — the aid recipients themselves.  So a group of researchers wanted to turn the tables. What do those who are supported by aid think? That’s the topic of a new survey, “Which Image Do You Prefer? A Study Of Visual Communications In Six African Countries.”  The findings show a mixed bag of reactions from the survey respondents to 10 ads — but the most common emotion was sadness.  “Right now, I feel like we are inferiors as a continent. It’s as if we are always begging,” said one 22-year-old Ethiopian man. “I understand that there are some of our people who are in need, who cannot even have a meal a day. But are we the only ones to whom that happens? The Western countries have problems, too.”  Researchers from the University of East Anglia and Radi-Aid, a charity watchdog project of the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH), surveyed 74 people who live in communities supported by aid in Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia.

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