Urgent Evoke

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Fellow Agents, some of you may have heard of a new campaign called One Million Shirts who want to collect 1,000,000 used and new t-shirts and send them to Africa to help people with no clothes. They are also collecting money for the shipping costs. This project by a (well intentioned?) Jason Sadler who is taking A LOT of criticism from development bloggers for obvious reasons: (1) there is no shortage of used clothing in Africa; and (2) second hand clothing has crushed the textile industry in many countries of Africa and hundreds of thousands of African workers have lost their jobs as a result of this.

Please read:

Jason Sadler has posted a video response to what he calls “hatorade” on http://yfrog.us/854i9z - wow, a real lesson on how NOT to respond to criticism IMHO!!

I would certainly be more impressed if Mr. Sadler’s charity would buy 1 million shirts from vendors in Africa and bringing them back to clothe poor inner city kids in the United States. Texas in Africa has offered various alternatives to Mr. Sadler.

So, what think you of Mr. Sadlers initiative?

Views: 732

Comment by Mazarine on April 29, 2010 at 11:01pm
Thank you for blogging about TOXIC GIFTS!

It's true, we need to be asking people in neighboring towns to make clothes for those who have no clothes, instead of sending things to africa. People don't understand the economic impact of a staple such as clothing, shoes, or food suddenly being FREE. Suddenly, the wh*** economy of several towns is destroyed.

Thank you for posting about this.

Mazarine
http://wildwomanfundraising.com
Comment by nomadHAR on May 2, 2010 at 12:41am
...

ethnocentrism and ignorance masquerading as a 'charity', which is doing only harm and no good.

information is so easy to obtain these days. there is no excuse to be that moronic.
Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on May 2, 2010 at 9:08pm
Major breakthrough - Mr. Sadler has delivered a heartfelt mea culpa for this project which was launched, critiqued (lynched??), killed and (hopfully) redirected in the span of 70 hours - a real live case study of (1) how not to do "aid" and (2) what to do when someone does not adhere to (1).
Comment by Ternura Rojas on May 3, 2010 at 11:43am
I wonder, probalbly these people thougt that sending clothes was exactly teh same to sending medicines or food, they must have had good intentions but they did not stop to think for a while, does it happen often? can yo guys list more cases?
Finally, where could pepole with good intentions LEARN the basic rules for effective aid? I would love to hear suggestions, mainly because the thruth is that it is time to STOP "Dead Aid"
Comment by Ssozi Javie on May 3, 2010 at 12:03pm
Agent Shakwei, I have been following this topic on twitter #1millionshirts and honestly his idea is good JUST NOT sustainable. One of the reasons that has crippled Africa's economies is Foreign Aid. Because people tend to sit back and wait for money or material donations to come to them, they dont feel the urge to work on their own. The men just sit back and relax [waiting for foreign aid], while to women suffer to provide for the children.
And just like you said, the local textile industries tend to lose market.

I think I like the way Oxfam does it: Oxfam collects used clothes, and other items, sell them off in the same countries and use the money to build projects in developing countries. For example they give cows to people. People sell the milk from the cows to get money.

Please also read an open letter to 1millionshirts
Comment by Paul Holze on May 3, 2010 at 4:21pm
Here is Jason's most recent post about the changes in the direction of the project: http://1millionshirts.org/blog/listening-learning-and-shifting-focus/
Comment by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 3, 2010 at 10:07pm
My first reaction to this is to be stunned that anyone so ignorant of the place he wanted to help could have the arrogance to initiate a major aid project. I know very little about Africa, but just in the course of my normal reading and talking to people I learned about the devastation of the local textile industry through the donation of second hand clothes some time ago.

My second reaction is a sigh of relief and a sense of gratitude towards the people who were able to contain their indignation and explain clearly and calmly to Jason Sandler what the problem was with his idea. Watching the video I think it's likely that a large number of people people allowed themselves to relieve their feelings by furiously attacking him. It's understandable, but what they actually accomplished was to come very close to ensuring a devastating project -- one that they wanted stopped --went forward.

The two lessons I take from this are the obvious one-- don't assume-- particularly about people and places that you know nothing about. Good intentions don't absolve anyone from responsibility for bad outcomes.

The second should be equally obvious, but often isn't. It is actually the same lesson, but turned back on ourselves-- don't assume-- particularly about people who you suspect may not share your opinions or values. That a project may have devastating effects does not mean that its proposer has bad intentions. And if you attack someone with good intentions you may be increasing the likelihood of a bad project going forward. That's not something that anyone who was more interested in outcome than ego would want to do.

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