10 Reasons Why You Should Not Donate To Charlie Satow This Summer

I'm fundraising to work as a 'Coordinator' with Education Partnerships Africa this summer (more info in link). I'm also running the Madrid Half Marathon. My target is 1000 pounds. 

If either of these things move you please donate as little or as much as you want. However before you do, please read this list of reasons why you should DEFINITELY NOT donate.

1. Because I already went to Uganda like two times already. Uganda doesn’t need any more assistance from Charlie.
2. Because this is the third consecutive year I’ve asked you to give your (potentially hard-earned) money. FFS. Just get a job.
3. Because this is the second long distance run I’ve done for fundraising purposes in the last two years. I’m displaying a total lack of creativity, and on top of that I’m only running half as far as last time.
4. Because this money unashamedly goes on ‘administrative costs’. This year my job is to support Project Workers and to look for new schools to work with so essentially ALL your money goes on getting ME to Mbarara and keeping ME alive for a month (not on me going out for dinner/safari/getting fantastic ‘African print’ shirts tailored don’t worry). So if you think of this as a holiday for me or if you think ‘administrative costs’ are the devil’s work, it would be positively immoral for you to donate.
5. Because your money would do way more good if you gave it to any one of the following, rigorously-evaluated organisations (GiveWell, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, Deworm the World Initiative). Or perhaps Oxfam, UNICEF or WFP, which generally all do excellent work. If you actually do this, send me a confirmation email or whatever because I will think of it as equal to or better than a donation to me. GO YOU.
6. Because my Facebook is just turning into a self-promotion channel (blog, fundraising etc) and you don’t want to reward that by donating. Though you could see it as giving the middle finger to the idea of Facebook, in which case you might want to reward that by donating.
7. Because you reject Peter Singer’s argument that we have a moral obligation to give to development organizations. That analogy about saving the child from the pond just isn’t valid.
8. Because you yourself are fundraising for a cause this summer. Good news! In that case let’s spread the love and mutually donate. Just let me know.
9. Because you’ve read a book by William Easterly or Dambisa Moyo and you think you’re all that and aid projects are BS. Run along you little scamp.
10. Because, just, like, me continually going on about development is plain irritating.

 If you aren't convinced by any of these arguments, I guess you should donate...

A little bit of optimism never killed anyone

The more I think about development, the more pessimistic and sceptical I seem to get. While I reckon it's generally a good thing in an industry often characterised by good intentions without much to back it up, sometimes it's downright moany and inappropriate; the other day I was introduced to someone who had spent their summer on a project with an NGO in Malawi, and before she could even finish explaining what she did there, I had to stop myself from blurting out some pointed question about how rigorous their monitoring and evaluation set up was.

Similarly, I saw this advert today (see photo or video if you are a Spanish speaker) for Vicente Ferrer's foundation - the recently deceased and publicly-decorated Spanish philanthropist (whose work I am not familiar with so the following is no criticism of what he did as much as his foundation's ad campaign) - in which he appears saviour-like, holding the 'key' to development, urging us to give a little and solve the problem of poverty . Usually, and in fact today was no exception, I would double back and question why there was a white Spaniard in the foreground covering half the advert which was supposedly putting the poor of India (represented by nameless dark-skinned children behind him) first, whilst the text had the arrogance to claim we outsiders with our spare change have the 'key' to relieving poverty in India ("we are the key that can change everything" it says in the video).

This then sent me into a spiral of thoughts about a variety of frustrating phenomena: the depressing lengths to which charities have to put us the potential donors in the foreground to get any sort of reaction (see Lilie Chouliaraki for a fascinating treatment of this subject - still reading odd chapters of the book when I get the chance); my friend telling me that she went to a conference about happiness and is now set on going to Haiti for a month next summer to help the world's poor ('what will you be doing?' 'Not sure, whatever they need me to do'), the pervasive idea of international development as charity, ah the list goes on. And this suits my slight tendency to scepticism - it's much easier to criticise and avoid putting your neck out and making the solid claim that in many cases international development efforts are good and we should celebrate them when faced with criticisms of volountourism, of useless and even harmful development projects, and of the whole development 'project' itself.

But not today (or this evening at least). I'm reading Angus Deaton's The Great Escape, which opens up with a relentlessly optimistic salvo ('Life is better now than at almost any time in history. More people are richer and fewer people live in dire poverty') and which goes on to claim that the "total number of dollar-a-day poor people in the world fell by three-quarters of a billion between 1981 and 2008," and even more damningly positive things like the fact that there is not a single country in the world where child mortality today is not lower than it was in 1950. Added to this I came across a review of Charles Kenny's Getting Better as well as this article from the Independent and I'm thinking that it's time for a bit of optimism in my development thinking. Clearly there are many many negatives and criticisms that can be made, but perhaps, at the start of the new year, and in contrast to my previous post we should reflect on the successes for a moment. If only to steel us for the inevitable setbacks and frustrations as we observe what happens development-wise in the 12 months to come.