No Tees Please

Editors G. KOFI ANNAN (@gkofiannan)

RAQUEL WILSON (@raquelwilson)

No Tees Please: Why Africa aid campaigns #FAIL 2

On April 27, 2010 the popular website Mashable ran a post about a new charitable campaign launched by a pair of US-based social media marketing professionals whose goal was to get everyday consumers to “Help us send one million t-shirts to the people of Africa”.

As the Mashable author wrote “The 1MillionShirts project, launched this month, is asking for used (but decent) T-shirts to be sent in with a one dollar bill to help with container costs. The shirts will then be shipped to Africa to help clothe folks in need.”

The campaign team set out to use social media tools to spread the word encouraging supporters to use the #1millionshirts tag in comments about the campaign on Twitter.

Within hours of the #1millionshirts tag had attracted the attention of African development and aid workers online and a heated debate commenced online with both sides using online and offline tools to further the discussion.

In 24 hours what started out as a typical American-lead Africa aid charity campaign became a full blown debate on the merits of such efforts, and how campaigns such as these negatively affect African com-munities and the aid industry.

Keeping with the socially networked, organic nature that has helped shape this particular discussion, I have tapped the wisdom of the crowd to produce this eBook outlining perspec-tives on why African aid campaigns such as #1millionshirts fail in the eyes of those who are closest to Africa.

You can also follow the ongoing discussion online by searching on Twit-ter for the terms #1millionshirts and #SWEDOW.

Read on to listen and learn...

Editor’s NoteG. Kofi Annanwww.annansi.com/blog@GKofiAnnan


Introduction

Outside intervention has always been a treacherous affair – from the “discovery” of the Americas, to the colonial enterprise, from the ongoing trade of forced human labor to continuing neocolonial interferences with what would be sovereign states. These histories are not ones that are only recalled when musty textbooks are dusted off, but shape the very identities of people across the world, let alone their homes (or the concept of home itself), their social relations, their economies and many other aspects of their lives.

From one point of view, today, outside intervention is often good intentioned. This perspective may belong to those intervening and it may also belong to the benefactors, many of whom have been massaged into the belief that anything foreign is better. Sometimes, these interventions are successful. Sometimes, they are merely successful, in the short-term. Sometimes, they may cause problems deeper than the ones there to begin with.

There is that oft-told story of the NGOs and the well. In some remote village

in the “developing” world, the women would travel a long distance on a daily basis to collect water from the river. Observing this, the NGOs decided to build a well, smack bang in the middle of the village, to “help”. With the well built and NGOs no doubt beaming and awaiting praise and thanks, imagine the surprise when they received the complete opposite. The women were not thrilled. The women were in fact upset.

“How can that make sense,” the NGOs wondered, “we’ve made their lives easier.”

Upon talking to the women (something that surely should have gone on a whole lot earlier), the NGOs learned that the women actually enjoyed their daily travels to the river. It gave them an opportunity to: be free of the homestead with its hierarchies and restrictions; spend quality time together and; to foster sisterhood. With nowhere to go, they were now confined to their compounds and the roles imposed upon them by their society.

So, something as useful and seemingly innocuous as a well, can have such a

A T-shirt distorted my self-ideaLulu Kitololowww.lulukitololo.com@lulukitololo


dangerous effect on the Selfhood of an entire gender. You may consider my use of the word “dangerous” as extreme but the Self is the beginning of everything. Only when one values, respects and truly loves their Self, can they then extend that love unto others and to their environment.

Sure, there are millions of deprived people in this world who would be happy to be given a new T-shirt, but let us consider the total cost of this transaction. Let us consider the result on self-perception.

“You decide what’s good for me, so why should I think myself?”“You give me handouts, so why should I do for myself”“You owe it to me anyway.”“I am not a person who is capable. I am destined to remain in this less fortunate state.”“I should be grateful with second best.”

This cost is also paid by the providers, though they may not realise that they too are losing out. Perhaps not until it is too late.

“They’ll take anything I throw their way.”

“They should be happy with my hand-me-downs and my waste.”“This should make up for all those top-grade minerals and other resources that I drain from their land.”“This should help me sleep at night.”

Let it not be confused, I’m not saying that it is wrong to try and help. Trying to improve things is a spirit that should be fostered and channeled properly for maximum efficiency. To begin with, the helpers should help themselves. Interrogate why you want to help and what you hope to get out of it. Perhaps first admit that you do hope to get something out of it. Be honest and seek understanding, knowledge and expertise from the people you want to help.

And go all the way. If your aim is to empower Africans, express that intention in every way you can; start the empowerment when choosing your suppliers, staff, researchers, consultants and advisors. Or partner with one of the many enterprising and innovative Africans who are already creating change in their communities.

It is clear that this has been a learning experience for Jason Sadler and that

something truly positive can come from his embryonic idea. It is encouraging that Jason was open to discussion and critique – not everyone in his situation would be. Let’s hope that everyone who comes across his website and campaign will also benefit from his learning.


27 April 2010

A new clothing-themed charitable campaign from the guys behind lucrative social media marketing exercise I Wear Your Shirt is looking to get unwanted T-shirts out of your closet and onto the backs of a million people across Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Swaziland and South Africa.

The 1MillionShirts project, launched this month, is asking for used (but decent) T-shirts to be sent in with a one dollar bill to help with container costs. The shirts will then be shipped

to Africa to help clothe folks in need.

As you’d expect, Jason and Evan are using social media to help promote the campaign with a Facebook page that is already racking up “Likes”, a Flickr tag to gather all relevant pics and the #1millionshirts Twitter hashtag to spread the word via Twitter.

While the project is thus far U.S.-centric, it’s starting to generate some momentum across the pond too. The team is currently looking for a company that can help store and/or ship the T-shirts in the U.K. If you

or anyone you know is interested in helping out, please contact project ambassador Alex Hardie.

“We understand that T-shirts aren’t the first thing you think of when you hear people are in need,” says the team, “but we also know what it takes to ask people to donate money.” Watch the video at on YouTube to listen to Jason explain the project in his own words and to find out more about the campaign before heading to your closet to weed out spare tees to send.

1MillionShirts leverages social media to help clothe Africa

www.mashable.com/author/amy-mae-elliot/@amymaeelliott

Amy-Mae Elliott


27 April 2010

UPDATE 4/28 10:45 am: answering the ”be a man” video: see end of this post.

I guess our great Alanna Shaikh post “Nobody wants your old shoes” (2nd most popular post of all time) did not quite reach everybody. Or maybe the parallels between old T-shirts and old shoes were not widely appreciated (HT @texasinafrica):

“A new clothing-themed charitable campaign from the guys behind lucrative social media marketing exercise I Wear Your Shirt is looking

to get unwanted T-shirts out of your closet and onto the backs of a million people across Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Swaziland and South Africa.

The 1MillionShirts project, launched this month, is asking for used (but decent) T-shirts to be sent in with a one dollar bill to help with container costs. The shirts will then be shipped to Africa to help clothe folks in need.”

The guy in the video also asks for $ from each of us because it is very

expensive to send containers full of bulky low-value T-shirts all the way over to all those places somewhere in Africa. Test question: why might this fact help explain why this is “one of the worst advocacy ideas of the year” (in @texasinafrica’s words).

UPDATE 4/27 10:45 am: @iwearyourshirt posts an angry video attacking me and other ”Internet trolls” for daring to criticize him, challenging us to come out from behind our computers to call him on the phone directly and “be a man.”

Laura has put up a constructive alternative suggestion to #1millionshirts in response to the, um, “be a man” challenge.

I of course completely agree with Laura.

As far as how to have the debate on 1MillionShirts, it’s perfectly legitimate to have a public debate on Twitter or any other forum on a very public advocacy idea that is out there. That the only acceptable alternative for @iwearyourshirt is to get a personal phone call is to suggest that public debate is not legitimate and that

Nobody wants your old T-shirts

www.aidwatchers.com@bill_easterly

William Easterly


the design of aid projects should be negotiated in private.

Sorry, pal, that’s not how democratic debate and accountability works. I’m sorry if you feel blind-sided by this debate, but the burden of proof was on you to check out your idea before you made it so public to a large audience. To me, that’s what it means to “be a man”, oops I mean, ”be a human.”


27 April 2010

Most of you have by now heard about the 1MillionShirts for Africa project, of which several development bloggers became aware yesterday thanks to a Tweet from @jonvwest.

Others have already given commentary on the plan ranging from snarky to insightful (in that order):

• Aid Watch’s explanation as to why shipping a million T-shirts to Africa is a bad idea.

• Aid Thoughts parses the site’s homepage.

• Tales from the Hood’s post that outlines what happened next and why we need to have conversations about aid in an open, transparent fashion.

• Amanda Maculec’s excellent thoughts on the logic behind the plan, the nature of good intentions, and the logistical consequences of shipping 1 million T-shirts to Africa.

Late yesterday, I got a Tweet from @gentlemandad, who actually talked with Jason Sadler, the guy behind the project. He said that Jason is open to

better ideas, and Jason and I have exchanged emails. While I get the sense that he still wants the project to involve T-shirts, I’m going to offer a few that don’t. This is because I just don’t see the need for such an approach. There’s no shortage of used clothing on the continent.

So, how else could Jason - who, I should note, is really mad at the aid blogging community about this - direct his well-intentioned efforts to help people?

• How about raising funds and awareness for an established organization? One of the stated goals of the project is to help widows establish businesses selling these shirts. Rather than spending the enormous sums it will cost to send $1 million shirts to the continent, why not instead direct those funds to an organization that already provides small business loans to widows or victims of conflict or disease?

• Where to do that? One organization I really like is Heal Africa in the D.R. Congo. They provide small business loans to foster families who are willing to

Some alternative ideas to donating T-shirts

texasinafrica.blogspot.com@texasinafrica

Laura Seay


take in orphaned children. The families use those loans to start businesses, which help with the expense of housing, clothing, and feeding an extra child. They then repay the loan and the money is used to help another foster family. This is a sustainable, well-thought-out project that meets a critical need in a culturally-appropriate way.

• There are tons of other programs that undertake similar or related activities. Fundraising for Kiva or a reputable, country-based microfinance institution like Ethiopia’s Amhara Credit and Savings Institution is another a great idea. Again, these organizations have long experience with providing loans to small-scale entrepreneurs who want to get a business started.

• Why not help African textile manufacturers? @tmsruge (who is actually from Africa) suggested on Twitter the idea of buying 1 million shirts from African vendors to donate to children in need stateside. This would provide African workers with desperately needed jobs, income, and stability, in both the manufacturing and the

cotton-production sector while meeting a need here as well.

• @AfriNomad suggested using the Hope Phones model, which collects used cell phones, sells them in the US market, and uses the money from those sales to buy new phones in local markets. Those phones go to local health workers in several developing countries. On average, each donated phone lets them buy three phones in the field. This is a great idea, and while I’m not sure it would work directly with T-shirts (there’s not a huge demand for used T-shirts in the US market, either), there are creative ways to make T-shirts into other products that are in high demand here in the west. Maybe women in a poor community here in the states could make rugs, coasters, magazine racks, or baskets from old T-shirts, sell them, and use the profits partly to provide themselves with a steady income and partly to support women in Africa. There are tons of possibilities.

• Could you auction off some of the most popular shirts from the I Wear Your Shirt project? Or

convince celebrities to wear or sign them before auction? That would be a great way to raise a lot of money quickly, which could then be donated to a reputable charity.

• Check out Saundra’s post on questions you should ask before donating goods overseas. This is a helpful tool for evaluating the idea and for thinking about other alternatives.

• Ask people what they need. Look for established charities doing something called “community-based needs assessments,” in which they survey people in poor communities about their needs, wants, and hopes for the future. Partner with an organization that is doing these kinds of assessments. Find out what the community needs. In almost fifteen years of studying African communities, I’ve never heard of a community saying that clothing is its greatest need. Things like access to clean water, better sanitation, easier transportation options to markets and schools, and basic security are far higher priorities. Direct your efforts as a


response to needs the intended recipients have directly expressed.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to help those in need. But when we’re not experienced or familiar with the people we want to help, the biggest mistake many Americans make is assuming that we know what poor people on the other side of the world need. I’ve learned over time that we’re usually wrong. Poor people know what they need, and what seems like a good idea to us many be completely inappropriate for the culture, climate, or community norms. Since bad aid can actually be worse than no aid at all, it’s really important to get it right.

The good thing about this is that it’s not that hard to figure out how to make a real, lasting difference in someone else’s life. All you have to do is ask.

UPDATES:

• Alanna Shaikh weighs in here, with a brilliant deconstruction of the now-infamous video.

• Here’s an incredibly thoughtful post from Siena Anstis explaining why this is a monumentally bad idea.

• Aid Watch jumps in with the idea of promoting smart giving.

• TMSRuge has a better idea for using all those T-shirts.

• As does Liberia’s African T-Shirt Company.

• Alanna has another wonderful post on the problems with responses to aid critics.

• Christopher Fabian has great observations on the importance of this debate.

• Tales from the Hood on why good intentions don’t matter if an idea is bad.

• Saundra has a great roundup (as usual) of related blog posts.

• Stratosphere on the difference between hating and thinking.

• Great thoughts on the importance of communications in development.


28 April 2010

Some of you may have heard of a new campaign called 1MillionShirts. They 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. They’ve got some NGO partners and they are starting to think about how best to distribute the T-shirts.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was an another well intentioned mess. The project is taking criticism for obvious reasons (if they’re not obvious, I’ll come back to them at the

end of this post.) The consistently brilliant Texas in Africa blog vouched for the good intentions of the founder, Jason Sadler, despite the terrible weakness of the idea. I decided I was going to stay out of the argument. Other, smarter people were saying everything I would have.

Then I saw the video. Now I don’t think it’s a well intentioned, poorly planned charity effort. Now I think it’s a marketing ploy from someone who is totally uninterested in helping others. When you actually want your project to

have an impact, you listen to criticism. You put your ego aside and learn from what people have to say. You don’t cling to your original idea with wounded fury and attack the people questioning you.

I watched the video seven times, and transcribed it for you. My notes are in red:

Hey Internet trolls, angry people on twitter, whatever you want to call yourselves.Angry people on twitter seems

Say no to old clothes

www.bloodandmilk.org@alanna_shaikh

Alanna Shaikh

Photo credit: Kim Tyo-Dickerson


accurate. I don’t know about trolls. Trolls make trouble for the fun of it. Not everyone who disagrees with something is a troll.

You all have a problem with me? That’s fine. I’m very easy to get a hold of - (904) 312 2712. Call me.I am not calling. I am writing this blog post, because I think public discussion is important. And you put your idea out into the world. It seems unreasonable to then demand that all conversation about the idea take place in private. Also, I live in Tajikistan, where I do international development work. Calling you by phone would cost me a fortune, and my Internet is too slow for a decent Skype call.

Be a man.This is sexist. I for one cannot be a man, without major surgery and life changes, because I am female. Are you assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is male? Or that everyone in the world is male? Or, wait – I get where you’re going with this. You think the people who disagree with you are cowardly, and you want them to be straightforward and courageous. Fair enough. But associating bravery and candor exclusively with men

is sexist. And yes, your sexism is relevant here. I don’t trust you to do a good job working with women and children if you think they 1) don’t exist or 2) are incapable of courage.

Don’t sit behind Twitter. 140 characters. You don’t even have the time to e-mail me and you’re going to talk to me on Twitter.Twitter is a pretty common forum for public discourse. This comment seems roughly equivalent to comparing that someone is hiding behind e-mail or a telephone. I do agree that 140 characters doesn’t lead to useful, detailed discussion. That’s why people are writing blog posts.

I don’t care. I don’t drink hatorade. I really don’t. I don’t care at all. My dog doesn’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care at all.That is not exactly the response of someone who is interested in learning from criticism. This isn’t personal. Nobody has any problem with you. This is about fear that this project you have founded will hurt the people in Africa that it intends to help. You getting mad does not change that.

If you have a problem with

1MillionShirts, you probably really don’t like the fact that I get paid to wear T-shirts for a living. So, go to iwearyourshirt.com if you really want me to ruin your day.Either this is a massive logical fallacy or a blatant plug for your business. I will assume the best and address it as a logical fallacy. Nobody is opposed to this project because they hate T-shirts or people who wear them. We are worried that sending a big pile of used clothes to African countries will hurt the local textile industry and people who sell retail clothes.

Otherwise I’m going to keep trying to give kids and families who don’t have shirts in Africa clothing to wear. Because you guys all seem to think that everyone in Africa has clothing.Not everyone in Africa has clothing you would approve of, or want to wear. But yes, I am willing to state that just about everyone in Africa has clothing. Certainly in the countries that you are planning to target: Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Swaziland and South Africa. For one thing, Kenya and South Africa are among the strongest economies on the continent.


So apparently you know better than I do. I’ve only been talking to charities who go there often.Most of the people arguing with you are experienced aid workers and international development professionals with long histories of working with Africa. I am not. I have backstopped Africa programs from DC, and I have a degree in global health, but that’s all I’ve got. J from Tales from the Hood is a different story. So is Texas in Africa. I can pretty much guarantee they have as much or more experience with Africa than the charities you’ve been talking to.

So just want to let you guys know (904) 312 2712. I’m happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk like a man maybe step up and actually speak to somebody, not just sit behind a computer. I don’t do that. I step up and get things done. So have a great day, I wish you all the best.I’m still a woman. Still interested in public discourse, not closed doors wrangling. And I still live in Tajikistan. You have a good day too.

For more information on why donations of used clothing can hurt Africans, see the following resources:

• The T-shirt Travels – a documentary on used T-shirts in Africa

• Dead White People’s Clothes• Oxfam Report on secondhand

clothing in Africa [PDF]


28 April 2010

Here’s the back story: A young American entrepreneur wanted to use his powerful social media profiles to do good. He hit on the idea of convincing people to pack up all their unneeded T-shirts, throw in a dollar for shipping, and send them – 1 million of them – somewhere in Africa. He partnered with two charities, applied for 501(c)3 status, and voilà, a new cause was born: 1MillionShirts.

Yesterday, professional aid workers, academics and researchers responded vociferously to this idea. Take a

look at these blog posts for more details, but for our purposes we can break it down to two reasons why 1MillionShirts is a poor idea:

1. It’s terribly inefficient. One million T-shirts are heavy, and shipping and customs cost a lot, likely more than it would cost to produce those shirts locally. Plus, cheap donated clothes flood local markets, undercutting local textile industries.

2. It’s just not needed. There are many serious health, economic, social and political problems

challenging different African countries today, but lack of T-shirts isn’t one of them. This project idea, like many bad ones, clearly came from thinking “what kind of help do I want to give” rather than “what kind of help would be most useful to some specific group of individuals.”

So it’s safe to say that Jason, the guy behind 1MillionShirts, is not an expert in giving aid to Africa. But maybe he IS an expert in something.

He is an expert in reaching people through social media. We can conclude this because Jason makes his living from companies that pay him to wear their T-shirts for a day and spread videos, pictures, blog posts and tweets about it to their networks—see iwearyourshirt.com. As one of the testimonials on their website puts it, “They are funny, creative guys who really know how to promote you and your products by wearing your shirt.” Another one: “Gotta love a guy who wears a shirt, gets great exposure for the company whose shirt he’s wearing as well as himself, and who manages

A suggestion for the 1MillionShirts guy

www.aidwatchers.com@aidwatch

Laura Freschi


to turn it into a business.”

After Jason’s do-gooding was met with such a barrage of criticism, he apparently offered to axe the 1MillionShirts campaign if someone could come up with a better idea.

So here’s our suggestion: Why doesn’t he use his own specialized expertise to help get the word out that giving cash is better than giving stuff. I bet if he put his mind to thinking about creative ways to spread that message, he could knock it out of the park.

And if the 1MillionShirts guy doesn’t feel that spreading this important message satisfies their desire to do good in the world, he can still follow the advice of many people who devote their professional lives to thinking about problems like these, and donate cash to a trusted charity with local knowledge and experience working to solve some specific problem—just so long as it isn’t African shirtlessness.

Update: Alanna Shaikh has written a definitive rebuttal to 1MillionShirts and Jason’s reaction to criticism – see it

here.

Update 2: See also the open letter from Siena Anstis.

Update 3: A perspective on the broader meaning of the 1MillionShirts fail from Christopher Fabian of UNICEF’s innovation team.

Update 4: This blog post has been edited at Jason’s request to indicate that only Jason (and not Evan, with whom he works on iwearyourshirt.com) is involved in the 1MillionShirts campaign. A decent Skype call.


28 April 2010

The 1MillionShirts guy is why development communications is central to development. As @saundra_s tweeted: “oversimplified and emotional appeals make these guys think they’re doing the right thing.” If the links supplied by Blood and Milk, explaining the impact of second hand clothes and the list of alternative means of helping supplied by Texas in Africa, were as common in Western culture as images of the lone child in the torn vest or the parents dressed in rags in a refugee camp, it wouldn’t occur to people that sending shirts

would help.

Disclosure: I went to my first animal rights meeting swigging from a bottle of milk. I was a student, it’d been a couple of days since I’d had a beverage that couldn’t also be used to flambé a crepe or disinfect a wound, so my late-afternoon decision to clean up my act and do something useful for a change seemed like a good one. The other members of the group glared at me, some turned away in disgust, the lights went down, a film began and I found that the topic was the evils of the dairy industry. Everyone has to start

somewhere.

I had a quick look round the major NGO websites to see if there were any photos of kids in rags and after the seventh or eighth it was clear that the image in my head is no longer so much in circulation. That’s good. But when I wandered along to the animal rights meeting, it wasn’t after researching the latest thinking in animal rights, it was the result of absorbing, over many years, bits of argument from friends, books, newspapers, guys who used to stand in the street every weekend with a petition and gruesome posters, TV and radio shows. If someone, somewhere had pressed a flyer into my hand about dairy, it was nothing to the impression made on my mind, age eight, of seeing Watership Down then discovering people ate rabbit. That was just a couple of genes short of cannibalism.

This is where I think we go wrong. The most shocking images of people suffering that we see on Western TV, the ones that stay with us for years, invariably have a Western guy who looks well educated and not exactly poor, standing in front of them and explaining them to us. He looks like us

Whose shirt is it anyway?

www.goodnesscommunications.com@booksquirm

Varihi Scott


and he is presented as the authority. Newspeople do it, celebrities working for charities do it and the NGO fundraising material that presents the NGO as the all-powerful, benevolent force, is doing the same thing. If instead we saw the people affected by the suffering, explaining what they were doing to tackle the situation, we wouldn’t think that to be concerned is to go there (as all the really concerned people on TV do), we wouldn’t think that they have nothing so surely anything we do will help (as a guy standing in front of kids playing in a ditch conveys) and if we could see the complex social web of family, friends, groups, local businesses and services, community movers and shakers who get things done, we might start to think about how we can move obstacles out of their way instead of imagining we’re the much needed star of the show.

Many NGOs already have the capacity to help address this. Currently a lot of citizen journalism posted from the more marginalised parts of the world looks a lot like Western backpackers with camcorders. Maybe that’s a language/translation issue and those guys are just emulating the role model our society has held up. But NGOs

have been working on community media projects for years – why can’t the graduates and the outputs of those projects flood into the spaces left by the redundant images of victimhood?

In Communication for Another Development: Listening before telling, Wendy Quarry and Ricardo Ramirez argue that to have proper communication in development, i.e. an exchange between all parties involved, requires different kinds of development organisations to the ones we have now. At present the development industry tells: it tells poor people what to do, it tells the public what it wants them to do, donors tell NGOs what they should be doing, NGOs tell donors what they think they want to hear. There are projects that claim to give the poor a voice but they always had a voice, the problem is that no one appears to be listening. I haven’t finished the book yet so I don’t know how it ends. However, the point that you have to listen to people before you can help them seems uncontentious and yet oddly absent in our cultural landscapes.

News of one relatively rich guy’s plan to try and help can travel round the

world in hours but the views of those he plans to help have yet to reach us.

(Am I equating poor people with farm animals? No, just saying none of us come into the world knowing everything about everything. An example of a personal screw up in the Third World Society would’ve been a better example but I didn’t go in there because it was clear from a distance that they were posh kids on a pity trip.)


28 April 2010

A guy came up with an idea: “Let’s collect 1 million T-shirts from the U.S. and send them to Africa.” Ok. It’s an obviously bad idea. It’s probably a viral promotion for his own company. It was covered by Mashable on Tuesday the 27th of April. None of this is revolutionary.

The guy social-mediazed his “idea”. That’s how you go viral. “Hey, Twitter, Facebook, THE INTERNETS...let’s collect 1 million T-shirts...” This is what one does, these days. Make it public, and put it out there. It’s an idea for “aid” to “Africa.” Why not. It’s

got a hokey website that said (as of Wednesday, 28 April) “625 shirts collected.” Inflamatory. engaging. Also not revolutionary.

Then a lot of people started talking about it, and really talking about it on Wednesday morning. That’s when it crossed my Twhreshold, anyway. By the time I’m writing this (the afternoon of Wednesday the 28th at 3:18PM NY local time) there have been over 1500 tweets on the topic.

People from Africa started tweeting. Then commentators in development

started tweeting. Then the guy made a video response telling people not to tweet but to call him. More trolling, perhaps. Then more tweets.

Development professionals, charity-minded folks, those interested in social media all responded. There were uniformly negative tweets from everyone with any sense of the “African” context. Mixed comments from those without. The obligatory blog posts followed (at least 7 that I’ve counted) filled with personal experience on the issue, reasons it wouldn’t work, and sources for what had come before. Also not revolutionary.

But look what happened. Within a day a development concept has been aired. It has been discussed. Literature has been created around it. Sources cited. Histories referenced. A community built.

Real-time input, from “the field” has just become an actor in “aid/charity/development.” Voices from places which otherwise would never be represented spoke. People in “the place” (“Africa”) where the “aid” was going got to weigh in. Experts who

One million tweetshirts: How to fail fast and with scrutiny

www.mobileactive.org@unickf

Christopher Fabian


had not met each other were able to share experience, synthesize and create new literature on giving, aid and development theory.

And it happened in a few hours.

I don’t know what the t-shirt guy will do. I don’t know what his motivations are. It doesn’t really matter, because I have just seen the avalanche start.

Imagine if a large organization could put out its project plans in a way that was as appealing to comment on as this.

Imagine if there was the same transparancy and accountability of ideas in development.

Imagine if there was the same involvement of donors and implementers – and (watch out!) the beneficiaries of projects.

Imagine if we could actually ask people in the developing world what they thought of projects before we started them.

And most importantly, perhaps, imagine if we could fail quickly enough

at the beginning of a project to not pour in the resources, ego and time that sometimes gives otherwise bad ideas an unstoppable, zombie-like momentum.

But wait. We can. And it just happened, right in front of you.

This was an easy one, because it was such an obviously bad idea, and it was so clearly stated in its badness (because that’s how you go viral). There were no long whitepapers to hide behind, no complicated acronyms that denote “divide” more clearly than any physical wall.

It was also easy because it was one guy, and he posted a provocative video as a response, so he got people emotional.

Mobile phones are (soon to be) everywhere. Connectivity is growing. Barriers of communication are dropping. If we can learn from this how to publicly lay our ideas on the ground and invite a square-dance on them, we can more correctly link development activity, delivery and effect - and that link can be the person at the very end of the last mile. Let me

call this the first crack in the very large iceberg of “charity.”

Christopher Fabian is the co-lead of the UNICEF Innovation Team. His opinions here are his personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of UNICEF.

The following are additional comments made by Fabian on his Mobile Active post.

Submitted by Christopher Fabian on Wed, 2010-04-28 20:57.

I think that what has happened around this idea is awesome and I mean that totally without sarcasm. I also think that you have kicked off something that is a true first, and that, also, is awesome.

Collecting stuff in the “developed world” and sending it to the “developing world” is a bad idea for a lot of reasons – and (again, without sarcasm) I’m happy to talk about it with you – I think there’s been a lot of good stuff posted on various blogs in response to the idea about specific “why’s” – maybe we can start that conversation on this public discussion


and continue offline.

You did put yourself out there – and you engaged people in a way that I haven’t seen in a while. And you’re taking the punches. All that is good. And we all get punched a lot anyway. The thing which you’re doing *now* which is potentially quite revolutionary is starting a discussion with the people doing the punching. This is the beginning of a serious change. Please recognize this.

By and large the 10% of people who were like: “Whoa! Bad idea! Look out!” have experience in development, have lived in the places development is done, or are actually from those places...and they’re right.

The 90% of people who were all: “Hey dude, let’s send some stuff that people don’t need to places where people already have that stuff, without asking them, or anyone, what we could actually do to make a substantive difference” – those 90%...well intentioned definitely, well informed – nope. They’re just wrong. But that’s ok.

Now it’s your job to help them get a

better understanding of things too. Surprise...that’s just the way it works.

The idea’s not dead in the water. It was dead out of the water. But the opportunity that you have is very much alive. Take this, and the attention that you’ll get from it - engage in a dialog - be *really* humble - and let it take shape based on real needs and you will have helped shape development thinking in a pretty substantive way.

Look forward to the discussion – and thanks for making for a really dynamic Twitter day.

Submitted by Christopher Fabian on Wed, 2010-04-28 21:40.

Yes - but look at *how* fast it all happened...and how broadly. That – to me – is the cool bit. It’s tough because many “good ideas” seem more complicated...so it seems we couldn’t possibly boil them down. But maybe we can because, usually, a complex good idea is just a lot of simple ideas squished together.

So - I agree there is not necessarily a correlation between this (potently

bad idea) and (the reaction today on Twitter) and a (less clearly bad idea) and any (reaction that might come to it)...but I bet there’s a correlation between how clearly and publicly and openly one states one’s “idea” and how much of a response one can get (and most importantly where that response can come from.) ...and that’s something to look forward to.

I can’t look away either...


29 April 2010

While I am not an expert or keep up with all things related to ICTs and ICT4D - proffering to hypothesise on other topics including ash clouds and Sudanese elections - I feel that the amount of activity generated on Twitter for the past two days around the #1millionshirts initiative deserves a (brief) mention.

To those not familiar with it, you can read summary posts here, here and here. In a nutshell, the debate went like this: guy #1 (@iwearyourshirt) makes a living of wearing T-shirts and using social media; guy #1 (together

with other charities) decides it would be a good idea to help Africa by collecting the already mentioned #1millionshirts (each with $1 to cover costs) and send them to Africa; guys #2 (including @texasinafrica; @TalesFromthHood; @saundra_s; @Katrinskaya; @Michael_Keizer; @morealtitude; @tmsruge; @alanna_shaikh; @meowtree; @IdealistNYC) are people that live/work in Africa, or on aid projects, or academics (or as guy #1 calls them, trolls) and think the idea is not good, not good at all, even a bad one and tweet about it; guy #1 does not like this “Hatorade” and posts

a video asking guys #2 to call him; debate continues, now involving blog posts, not just tweets; guy #1 (he’s getting a lot of attention by now) posts another video saying (sort of) that he’s open to new ideas; guys #2 and guy #1 arrange to meet and discuss all this in a few hours - 12pm EDC.

All this discussion started on Tuesday, and since then a large number of contributions have been made. And most of them from people that either live in Africa, have expertise in aid project or are somehow involved with the development community. I can’t really discuss the details of this project (although from my limited knowledge it does sound like a bad idea), just pointing out that what we have just seen is probably what real Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) in action looks like. And I feel really impressed with the speed, precision and thoroughness it has worked. One recent and very insightful blog post by @mobileactive points precisely this:

But look what happened. Within a day a development concept has been aired. It has been discussed.

The #1millionshirt initiative: or how ICT4D history has been made on real time

onafrica.maneno.org@onafrica

Manuel Manrique Gil


Literature has been created around it. Sources cited. Histories referenced. A community built.

Real-time input, from “the field” has just become an actor in “aid/charity/development.”

Voices from places which otherwise would never be represented spoke. People in “the place” (“Africa”) where the “aid” was going got to weigh in. Experts who had not met each other were able to share experience, synthesize and create new literature on giving, aid, and development theory.

And it happened in a few hours.

I don’t know what the T-shirt guy will do. I don’t know what his motivations are. It doesn’t really matter, because I have just seen the avalanche start.

Imagine if a large organization could put out its project plans in a way that was as appealing to comment on as this.

Imagine if there was the same transparency and accountability of ideas in development.

Imagine if there was the same involvement of donors and implementers - and (watch out!) the beneficiaries of projects.

Imagine if we could actually ask people in the developing world what they thought of projects before we started them.

And most importantly, perhaps, imagine if we could fail quickly enough at the beginning of a project to not pour in the resources, ego and time that sometimes gives otherwise bad ideas an unstoppable, zombie-like momentum.

But wait. We can. And it just happened, right in front of you.

This is really what one envisions ICT4D can become in the future. Helpful tools that will allow a large number of people from around the world, who will be affected by the projects and with different expertise come together and discuss the advantages and problems of different aid and development initiatives in real time, and before things get off the ground.

I’ll stay tuned to see where this discussion eventually leads to, but I already have the feeling of having witnessed (live) development and ICT history being made. A discussion that, I feel, may easily become a case study for future academics studying the growth and development of ICT4D. Exciting indeed.


29 April 2010

Dear Jason (of 1MillionShirts),

First, sincerely, I commend you for trying to make a difference. You’ve been the talk of the twittersphere lately, and while I don’t know you personally, I’ve spent hours contemplating the 1MillionShirts conversation over the last few days. I envy your marketing and social media saavy, your web design skills (or designer friend), and your can do attitude. Most start-up 501c3’s never get the attention you’ve received in one day. I first heard of you from Mashable. Mashable. Impressive.

Though not as experienced in social media as you, I work one the marketing side of an international non-governmental organization. We’re committed to sustainable long-term development, although admittedly we don’t always get there.

As a way of further introduction, I’ll share a story about me and a t-shirt.

When I was a sophomore in college (circa 2006) I bought a t-shirt as part of a fundraiser for MSF. It had a silhouette of a woman printed on the

front, holding her hand out, with a pained look on her face. Next to her was the phrase “STOP GENOCIDE IN SUDAN”.

The minimum suggested donation was $10, but to better support the organization one could give more (I gave $10).

Every time I wore the genocide shirt people would ask how I planned to stop the genocide in Sudan. Or who was fighting. Or where Sudan is.

I had no idea.

Now four years later, to be honest, I still can’t explain many of the facets and complexities of the genocide in Sudan. I still have nothing more to offer but prayers and the occasional seemingly insignificant donation. But for the last few years, I’ve been privileged to learn from some pretty incredible people: college professors who challenged me to let go of preconceived and racist ideas, friends who have shared books and guided this stubborn white kid from the suburbs to think more globally (specifically Naomi, Bwalya, Michael, Jeich and Randy. Thank you), and

Dear Jason

www.kylevermeulen.com@kylevermeulen

Kyle Vermeulen


certainly not least the authors (and more recently bloggers) who have opened up a world of experience and knowledge.

Your education came faster. Whereas I simply read Easterly, he responded directly to you (...I’m not saying I envy the attention). Snarky or not, you’re in dialogue with some of the brightest minds in development. It looks like things are evolving from pointed criticism to constructive conversation. Historical moment in NPO history? Perhaps a stretch, but it’s been a great thing to witness.

I have no doubt that #1millionshirts was born from pure motives. Sending a shirt from America to a child in rural Kenya makes me smile: it’s a nice gift. Clearly, It’s not long term sustainable development, and it’s not supposed to be. It’s a gift, and it has the potential to make a child smile. So it’s not a stretch to see how you moved from making one child smile, to wanting to make one million children happy. But when you did that, you’ve introduced a massive logistics puzzle that involves shipping cargo, warehouses, trucks, drivers, and lots of money.

Shipping a bunch of shirts isn’t evil, it’s just not good development. It carries the obvious risk of consuming lots of time from the NGO’s you’ve partnered with, along with a myriad of other problems pointed out by other folks with much more experience than I.

I’m not sure why the 501c3’s didn’t point this out. My guess is they were excited by the possibility of a lot of good press and attention, and thought the cross-promotion could help spur new donors for them. Good development practices sometimes get lost in the excitement.

But I digress. The question you’re wrestling with is what to do now. As Chris from MobileActive writes, there are some pretty positive lessons to take away from all of this. And therein lies a huge opportunity. My hope is that you will put the project on hold and invest that time into learning about development and the aid industry. Read everything you can, meet with experienced thinkers and workers, spend some time in a “less-developed country” (or whatever the accepted term is these days).

And then…Become a voice for good development. Speaker, blogger, social media persona, ect. The (t-shirt) rags to (best practices) riches story about a guy who wanted to help… and then got beat up by the Internet trolls of development. Iron sharpens iron, and we’ll emerge better for it.

I’m serious; development advocates could use your help. There are more people that want to start their own non-profit than ever. “Helping Africa” is trendy, but without a knowledge of good development, there will be more negatives than positives. Good intentions are not enough.

My wonderful, amazing, brilliant girlfriend Richenda recently went to a conference called Ideation. There were many, many people there in the process of establishing non-profits. Hopefully those non-profits will follow the lead of speakers Scott Harrison and Eugene Cho and do great at portraying the people they partner with as... well… people. And hopefully new orgs will follow Charity Water and One Days Wage’s example in leaving the development work to organizations on the ground with indigenous staff, community trust, and goals of long-


term sustainability. But many people launching NPOs don’t. They don’t know better. They are passionate, they move quickly, and their impact is minimal. Or none. Or worse.

There’s an African proverb that says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

It’s not so hard to imagine a few years down the road, you, on stage at the Ideation conference, sharing lessons from this experience with a new class of motivated Internet marketers who want to make a difference. @meowtree will live tweet, and @bill_easterly will be in the back row smiling.

Anyway, best of luck. If you’re ever in Seattle, beers on me.


1 May 2010

A lot has been said against Jason Sadler and his project 1MillionShirts. A lot of it I agree with, but I want to try to present some things that may linger from a different view point. Some of this is a personal exercise to learn more about how and why this idea started. My goal is to get people to attack some misconceptions and thoughts. So please, no personal attacks, this is an exercise and an attempt to change the direction of the conversation to look at this in different ways. If I miss anything please make suggestions and try to

think of ways to not only prove me wrong, but to also think of how to combat these ideas.

1. There is an existing market for second hand clothes in Africa. How can 1 million shirts spread over a continent of 1 billion people be anything more than a drop in the bucket when spread out over the continent?

2. If it does flood the market, what is the harm in providing even cheaper shirts for people to buy? Won’t this give people the ability to spend less on clothing

and more on investing on other projects?

3. How is it ‘trash’ or ‘insulting’ to send second hand clothes when people happily buy and wear second hand clothes?

4. Isn’t it a good thing that we are not just throwing the shirts away?

5. By using social media and connecting people to the travel of the donation, isn’t it positive that people will be able to easily remain connected to what they contribute (i.e. see where and how the project is growing and developing live via Twitter and Facebook)?

6. There are still some people who do wear rags and little to no clothes. Wouldn’t this help to clothe these people and improve overall hygiene of the continent?

7. Who says the shirts have to be used as clothing? Doesn’t this provide a cheap product that can be used to make other items by innovative Africans?

That is what I can think of right now. Please let me know if I should add anything and please consider this as a discussion point not as a case in either direction for the issue.

Groupthink break-up

www.aviewfromthecave.com@viewfromthecave

Tom Murphy


2 May 2010

Only knowing Jason Sadler from following his site iwearyourshirt.com, I learned of 1millionshirts.org. Personally, I thought it was an excellent idea for humanity to help clothe others and since I live close by the “collection site” wanted to get involved by helping packing and shipping.

While on the conference call, I learned differently.

I learned there are many different organizations in Africa to aid in having the residents of Africa help themselves.

I have lived in the United States since birth and really had no idea about what goes on in Africa other than what I may have seen on a television show such as 20/20 or Dateline. Perhaps I was blinded by the thought “if it’s not going on in my neighborhood, it doesn’t matter”.

Elaine Murszewski

Well as of the call, it DOES matter. What I learned from the many speakers on the call was that each one had a purpose, an ideal, a mission to help Africa. They made a real point.

By the end of the call, I wondered why world leaders couldn’t get together and speak the same way as those on the call.

Even though, in my opinion, the call may not have solved the problems of the world, it was a start. It gave each person a way to address the issue and offer a resolution. It showed 1MillionShirts can be turned into something very positive with collaboration of others who are in Africa.


2 May 2010

One of the best things about the great T-shirt debate has been the variety of voices and perspectives that are weighing in. This one potentially misguided project was able to catalyze a huge discussion on the nature of ‘aid’. Once again the power of social media to engage people in debate and dialogue was demonstrated.

There are a lot of angles to follow up on from last week’s blow up. There’s a lot to unpack and it goes much deeper than a conversation about T-shirts. One thread I find

particularly interesting is the use of social media and ICTs (information and communication technologies) for bringing greater accountability and generating input and dialogue around ideas for aid and development.

Christopher Fabian, Owen Barder and @morealtitude wrote about this specifically in relation to the T-shirt debate; and Duncan Greene, Owen Barder, Aidwatch, Tim Ogden and others in a broader debate about accountability, aid and development. Certainly there are many posts and discussions out there on this topic.

Some things that stand out for me in the aftermath of the T-shirt discussion:

Broadening perspectives.It’s easy to forget that we all mean something different when we use the terms ‘aid’ and ‘development.’ There is a big difference between emergency aid and longer-term development. And there are countless theories and approaches and understandings of both of those terms (Alanna Shaikh and Tales from the Hood have both written on that). This was really apparent throughout the discussion last week and in the on-going commentary.

I’m still trying to sort out in my own mind the difference between the various aid and development theories, the perspectives of the ‘aid bloggers’ that I follow, and the frameworks of other people who were involved in the T-shirt debate. People’s views are intimately linked with cultural, political, economic and religious worldviews, and varying levels of snark (which I have to say can be very intimidating) making it even more interesting. Before Twitter and the blogosphere, I certainly didn’t have daily exposure

The elephant in the room

lindaraftree.wordpress.com@meowtree

Linda Raftree


and access to such an array of thoughts. Score one for social media.

The elephant in the room.All this access to all these perspectives and on-line debate and open participation is great for me. And for you. Because we read English and have access to the Internet.

But there is a really big elephant in the room. One that was lurking on the global conference call hosted by Mobile Active on April 30 and that is still standing around quietly as the discussions continue. I’m talking about the voices and perspectives of the people that the 1MillionShirts project was aimed at helping.

I would bet money that some of those voices would have said “I want a T-shirt.”

There are a lot of possible outcomes when ‘beneficiaries’ and ‘donors’ actually talk to each other. Like donors wanting to give T-shirts and people wanting to receive them. Then what? Most of those involved in aid and development, and work with local economies can and have listed a myriad of reasons why handouts are

not a good idea, but most also believe in listening to voices of ‘beneficiaries.’ It seems paternalistic to say that NGOs or businesspeople know best what people need. What will happen when more donors and beneficiaries are using social media to talk to one another? And what if NGOs or governments or business people trying to improve ‘developing country’ economies don’t agree? Then what? That’s going to be pretty interesting. For a taste of this can of worms, read this post and related comments.

Development education.This brings me to thinking about the educational processes that contribute to good development results. Around the world, people have been presented with hand-out and silver bullet ideas around development and aid for a long time. Donors need to be educated about effective aid and development, but communities do also. People have been trained to gravitate towards one-off donations and charity mentalities, and need to learn why that isn’t actually very helpful in the long term. They’ve been taught that there is a silver bullet we just need to find. People have also been trained to take hand outs and see themselves

as victims and need to re-learn how to take the reins and do for themselves. This is true everywhere – people look for the easy way out. Consider how many people in the U.S. for example prefer to get plastic surgery or take miracle diet pills and medications over adopting healthier lifestyles involving a good diet and exercise. Complicated situations require integrated approaches and often need cultural shifts and behavior changes. Those take time and effort and are hard to explain. How does social media impact on or shift this in terms of aid and development, and in which direction is it shifting?

Barriers to social media participation.Both #1MillionShirts and Kiva were held up to a huge amount of scrutiny online via social media. But again, who was scrutinizing, and who had access to the tools and means to participate in these widespread discussions? It was not the people getting loans from Kiva or the eventual T-shirt wearers. It was donors and ‘experts’. I’m quite sure that there are plenty of discussions happening about Kiva programs at local levels, in person, in meetings and in local


media or newspapers. But these don’t normally make their way to the Internet.

I don’t know Kiva’s programs well, but I assume that Kiva staff and/or partners, for example, are listening to that local input and using it to improve their programs on the ground to make them more useful to participants. And I would bet that those discussions take place within a longer term education, training and relationship building process as with many NGOs. This kind of input from and dialogue with program participants is every bit as important for adapting and improving programs and initiatives, and maybe more important, than all the public discussions on the Internet….as long as it’s being listened to and responded to, and as long as local offices are taking these messages up the chain within the organization, and as long as local offices also are being listened to and carry weight within the organization. What might be the role of social media there to move those offline discussions further within organizations and to educate, inform and engage the broader public and ensure that responses and changes are forthcoming and everyone learns

from it?

There are still huge barriers to social media participation for many people in communities all over the world… not having electricity, computers, smart phones and Internet, to start with. There are also barriers like language, literacy, age and gender-based discrimination, hierarchies and cultural norms that limit participation in general by particular groups in discussions and decision making. When working face-to-face, good organizations are in tune with the barriers and find ways to gather input from those typically left out of the discussion. How can organizations use what they know about engaging more marginalized populations and apply it to a more creative use of social media to ensure that all voices are heard? What resources and ICT tools would be needed to do that effectively?

Offline to online to offline.And how could more of the discussions that happen on the ground with communities, when programs are being designed, implemented, evaluated and re-designed; be shared in the open by those who are involved – whether participants, local

bloggers, citizen journalists, NGO workers or others? And how can the debates happening online make their way back to communities that are not connected? It would be amazing if more program staff and community workers were blogging and sharing their work and their challenges and accomplishments. And if more organizational decision makers were listening to what their community workers or other staff who are blogging and tweeting are saying. And if more people participating in programs could share their viewpoints via the Internet. This would be useful to the global commons and would also help the fields of aid and development to improve.

How can we support more communities to have access to social media and ICTs as tools to participate more broadly? And how can community members be the owners and drivers of this discussion and input. How can we help bring voices from the grassroots to a broader public and also bring these broader public debates back to communities. How can the access, language, literacy and cultural barriers be addressed? There are some programs out there


doing this, for example Global Voices Rising, MIT’s Department of Play at the Center for Future Civic Media and the Maneno platform, but we really need more of it.

Youth.I think as connectivity becomes less of a challenge, we will see the younger generation claiming spaces in this way. More organizations should be working to engage more young people in the development process and supporting them to access ICTs and social media. When a consultation with children and youth was done after the Haiti earthquakes, for example, young people did not say that they wanted hand outs. They said that they wanted to participate. They wanted to play a stronger role in the recovery and the reconstruction. They said they wanted education, a voice in how things were to be done, decentralization.

Staff that I’ve worked with on youth and ICT programs in several countries have said that ICTs and community media are excellent tools for engaging youth in the development process and maintaining their interest, for supporting youth-led research and

collecting opinions about community processes. With advances in technology, these voices can reach a much broader and public audience and can be pulled into donor communications as well as used as input in the resource and problem analysis, program design, program monitoring and evaluation processes. Youth can access information previously unavailable to them which broadens their own views and helps in their education processes. They can also contribute information and images of themselves and their communities to the online pool of resources so that they are portraying themselves to the world in their own image as opposed to being shown by and through the eyes of outsiders.

In addition to the T-shirt debate stirring up questions about good donorship, I really hope it stirs up the debate about the value of more local ‘beneficiary’ voices in aid and development discussions, and that it fuels more efforts to use, adapt, and develop social media tools and ICTs to support these voices to join the debate.

What about you? What do you think?


4 May 2010

Linda (@meowtree) has a fabulous line in her excellent post entitled “The Elephant in The Room”: Speaking of those voices not on the great T-shirt conference call, actual potential recipients of aid, she writes: “I would bet money that some of those voices would have said “I want a shirt.”

And she’s absolutely right. We don’t like to discuss it, but sometimes beneficiaries and aid-recipients want, or at least will accept, bad aid.

After nearly twenty years in this

business, I can say with confidence that no matter how parochial, no matter how ethnocentric, no matter how culturally inappropriate, no matter how sexist or racist or just plain lame, no matter how likely to create dependency or even cause actual harm a bad aid idea is, there can still always be found a country, province, district, or community that wants it. No matter how ineffective, inefficient or just plain bad your idea is, you will still always be able to find someone who wants to be your beneficiary.

This all means a number of things:

1. The fact that you can convince a partner or community or beneficiary to accept your bad idea does not mean that it’s a good idea. People have many reasons for accepting aid, and for agreeing to “partner” with NGOs. Don’t be naïve: manipulation does happen.

Local support for your project is not proof that it’s a good project.

2. Just because the idea comes from or is endorsed by a local person or local partner or the local government or a vociferous person from the place where you want to do the project but who now lives in Europe or Australia or the USA doesn’t make it a good idea.

People from every country and community on the planet are equally capable of dreaming up bad aid ideas.

3. Beware the “dark cloud of local context”: While, of course, knowledge of the local context is immensely important when it comes to the design and implementation of an aid program,

The aardvark in the room

talesfromethehood.wordpress.com@talesfromthhood

Tales from the Hood


local context does not override basic common sense. Too many aid amateurs (and even a few seasoned professionals) give in to pressure to accept totally illogical restrictions or conditions, or to do positively idiotic projects because they are “what the local partner said.” “They said they wanted it…” just plain doesn’t fly with me.

Context is no excuse for bad aid.

* * *

I already know that some of you will read this and get grumpy. What. Ever.

This is not ethnocentrism. This is not me saying that aid workers always know best. This is in no way license to skimp on good participatory process, nor license to cut corners on good data collections or assessments. This is not permission to disrespect local values either in program design or implementation. We cannot discount local context or blow off what local counterparts say. To shout-out another @meowtree post, it’s not about one side running roughshod over the other, but rather it’s about meeting in the middle.


4 May 2010

Last week my Google Reader account was bombarded by posts about a guy named Jason, his idea to help the “people of Africa” with donated T-shirts and a steady stream of corresponding outrage from aid professionals and observers. Here is the go-to link for all things shirt-gate.

Here is my 140-character summary:

No shirts in Africa? Idea: Send 1M tees. Instant web of rejection. Anti-hatorade video reply posted. Roundtable convened. Rethink.

What did I learn from this back-and-forth? First, many Africans do already have shirts (thanks, blogosphere!). Second, in-kind donations of items like shirts and shoes from far away lands do not make for good humanitarian aid. We were reminded of this after the earthquake in Haiti.

A weekend re-branding suggests that the folks at 1millionshirts.org may have learned a few things as well. Most significantly, the site no longer refers to the “people of Africa.” The goal, however, is still 1 million shirts raised. Why 1 million shirts? Jason and

colleagues admit that the answer is not clear yet, but commit to use T-shirts “as the vehicle to help sustainable efforts in specific areas that the charities we choose to work with are involved in.”

In their defense, you don’t have too many options after you pay $1.99 for the domain name 1millionshirts.org, right?

As we wait to see what will come out of this effort, are there any lessons that aid/development actors and watchers can take from shirt-gate? I think so. Here are a few suggestions:

1. In the world of web 2.0, “bad” aid ideas can come from anyone, not just aid professionals and donors.

2. Beware: their bad ideas don’t have to jump through as many hoops as our bad ideas.

3. When bad ideas are discovered, it helps to speak up. The crowd can make a difference.

4. In such cases, remember that most people will only come to the table with “good intentions.” Offer them a seat anyway.

5. All good snark has its limits.

On “hatorade” and T-shirts for the “people of Africa”

www.ericpgreen.com@ericpgreen

Eric Green


There will be more 1MillionShirts efforts — you can bet on it. USAID has. Here is a link to a contest to create a public service announcement to get out the message that cash is best when it comes to disaster relief. Upload your entry here.


7 May 2010

Things have changed for the 1MillionShirts campaign. They are no longer going to ship indiscriminately 1 million shirts to someplace in Africa.

Soon after the ill-fated campaign was kicked off, “in the know” aid bloggers really got together on this one and made a big to-do about how terrible this idea was. Many felt invigorated, even inspired to do something! Cue in the “round table” call...

“Voices from places which otherwise would never be represented spoke.

People in “the place” (“Africa”) where the “aid” was going got to weigh in. Experts who had not met each other were able to share experience, synthesize and create new literature on giving, aid, and development theory.” –Christopher Fabian, Mobile Active

Fabian goes on to suggest that it’s mobile web technologies and connectivity that made this all possible.

I don’t entirely agree.

Sure...these tools make it

tremendously easier to connect and communicate with experts around the world and, of course, access to this global network is critical for all voices to be heard. Does that sound about right?

Wrong.

Not all voices will be heard. Not everyone will get their chance to have their say. What these tools also have done is elevate the noise & clutter of information to a deafening roar.

The good ideas are drowned out. The bad ideas stand out.

This provocatively bad idea (1MillionShirts campaign) stood out from the crowd of good ideas and grabbed a worldwide community’s attention. Like driving by a bad traffic accident, something was remiss and it grabbed our attention. From there we started to take a vested interest in the story.

The round table call that I listened in on is a dramatic example of how good ideas just aren’t good enough. And, I’m not talking about the guy with the

Hey critics! You owe a big thanks to a bad idea

www.webconsultingdc.com@eglue

Ernesto Gluecksmann


#1millionshirts, I’m referring to his most vocal critics of the idea.

Not offering alternative solutions invalidates your criticism.

Taking action is everything. With the best of intentions, mistakes are always made. But mistakes are in fact investments. Investments in education. If you try to do something and you fail, you just learned one more way how not to do it. Yes, speaking with the community and getting advice before you take action are important. But don’t ask for permission. Ask for advice on effective execution. If all of that talking inhibits you from taking action, the chatter becomes the big mistake. Go ahead, make your mistake, tell us about it, and we’ll all keep moving forward with the lesson.

The round table discussion (loosely transcribed here) shows how little action is ever really offered. There were definitely suggestions, ideas, and even outright demands but few of the speakers offered a true solution that they would enact. They simply shared their thoughts about what they would

do, as opposed to what they were going to do.

In this world of overwhelming choices, it’s hard to know where to focus our attention. I don’t know about you, but I am going to focus on the people trying to do something, and ignore the cries of the cynics unless they offer an actionable alternative solution.


9 May 2010

That is the first thought that comes to mind when I reminisce about what happened concerning the response to the 1MillionShirts idea. Media in general, and especially social media has evolved to a level at which collective action, idea sharing, and distribution of information happens at breakneck speed. But the lightning fast velocity at which new ideas and approaches to development and poverty reduction are still up against entrenched notions of Africa, “aid” and “development” that continue to be paternalistic, condescending, and frankly, ignorant of the very conditions

that aid is supposedly designed to alleviate.

The men at 1MillionShirts are commendable for thinking about those who are less fortunate. Their altruistic motives were not in question as such. What drew criticism was the mechanism. Donating 1 million used T-shirts to Africa is not the best mechanism to reduce poverty in Africa, nor was it helpful to the environment of Africa. As a whole, the dumping of excess Western cotton products into formal and informal markets in Africa has helped contribute to massive downturns in Africa’s cotton industry, which, along with sugar, is one of Africa biggest export crops. Secondly, the 1MillionShirts operation seemed to have begun in earnest collecting shirts without discernible consideration as to the potential consequences or implications of the project. As the saying in Proverbs says, “There is wisdom in counsel”; it was difficult to imagine that such an undertaking would have been met with approval from seasoned aid and development workers, African textile manufacturers or Africans themselves.

morethanaruby.wordpress.com@karennattiah

Karen Attiah Personally, the cursory-at-best approach to dealing with poverty reduction in Africa as a result of a lack of understanding denoted a kind of disrespect to Africa, its industries and the needs of its people, if I can be plain. To get to know a people, to help people, you must respect people and their conditions. Donating a bunch of used, stretched-out, poor quality T-shirts from the 1990s does not connote having a respect for the people and the economic needs of Africa. Africa needs investment, Africa needs employment, Africa needs support in its various agricultural sectors, maternal health care, roads, and so on an so forth. A bunch of faded and used shirts? Not so much.

The men at 1MillionShirts took a step in the right direction by agreeing to a conference call with a group of concerned aid professionals, Africans and other individuals who were not impressed with the initiative. From reading the transcript and the follow up blog post at 1millionshirts.org, it appears that the people behind the project have realized their mistakes

It all happened so fast


and agree to come up with a better solution. I respect their humility and willingness to learn. As a young person myself interested in Africa, I remember impatiently tweeting, “So now what? What’s the PLAN?” In my own dealings living and researching in Africa, I often felt that there is so much talk and not enough action when it comes to discussing solutions to problems. It frustrated me. However, again, I had to keep in mind the saga of 1MillionShirts happened so fast, literally in the span of two days. It is only the beginning of hopefully a better project to come. Let’s keep the momentum going!


9 May 2010

For me, the #1millionshirts story started when I saw the discussion on Bill Easterly’s blog. Soon after tweets started to appear and I was able to find Jason’s Twitter handle @iwearyourshirt. At the time, it was obvious that a few people had been contacting him and he was replying that he would not discuss issues via Twitter or online and that people should phone him. It was after 10PM, but I eventually decided to make the call via Skype – my primary purpose was to understand why anyone would think this was a

www.joe-t.info@gentlemandad

Joe Turner

Giving which costs nothing is worth nothing

viable idea. It became clear from the call, which lasted nearly half an hour, that Jason imagined that there were millions of Africans without clothing who would appreciate a T-shirt. Furthermore he was quite antagonistic to the thought that the idea could be in error. Towards the end of the call he told me that if I could think of a better idea I should suggest it. I repeated this on Twitter and saw a blizzard of blogs and responses in reply. For me, the tragic element of the whole episode is that it is symptomatic of modern Northern society. We want to believe that a small person can make a big difference if he is joined by a whole multitude of other people doing their bit. We want to believe in a dream that a small person with no relevant skills or experience can do something amazing with the new social technology available at his fingertips. When these ideas collide, many people get involved. Yet, it seemed obvious to me that this was an idea which was going nowhere. On the financial level, I just could not see how the collection and distribution

of random T-shirts could bring benefits which could never exceed the costs of doing it - it would be like sending someone a dime candy which cost a dollar in postage. Of course, there were various other arguments put forward, but this was the simplest and most telling for me. There is a huge market for second hand clothing in Africa, it is true, but the costs of attempting to set up a distribution system outwith of the existing structures was inevitably doomed to failure. Of course, Jason’s idea was always small-beer-attached-to-massive-hype. Even if he had managed to collect the million shirts, it was unlikely it would have made much of an impact in Africa compared to all the other problems and issues. But what was really interesting was the discussion it generated - we examined the efficiency of the Aid Industry compared to Corporations; we asked whether the motives of donors mattered; we asked how we could build sustainable systems of giving; we wondered whether there was anything useful which could be picked off the bones of the idea.


It is not clear whether it was all worthwhile. On the one hand, I met a lot of people and had a whale of a time. On the other, maybe we picked apart the concepts to such an extent that there isn’t much left except confusion. Giving which costs nothing is worth nothing. Until everyone learns this, I don’t think we’re ever going to get anywhere. If an idea only costs a couple of clicks or a postage stamp, it is highly unlikely to be doing anything of value.


9 May 2010

If you’ve ever wondered what 21st century, social media powered stakeholder engagement might look like, there was a pretty good demonstration last week.

Jason Sadler, a young promoter whose business leaves him with a surfeit of shirts decided to combine his excess wardrobe with his social media following and created a campaign for a good cause. His 1MillionShirts campaign asked people to send in old T-shirts which he would distribute to ‘the shirtless’ in Africa.

It was a bad idea, and aid and social entrepreneurship bloggers quickly started to point this out. You can read the blogs here.

To Jason’s credit he responded to the criticism and the opportunity for learning, and got on the phone for a roundtable discussion with many of his critics. He is currently rethinking his campaign.

Few corporate citizenship efforts are as poorly thought out as 1MillionShirts. But many are seeking to demonstrate some form of consumer-to-beneficiary

(C2B? or should that be C2P?) business model. They often share the same mix of on-the-ground complexity and simple (often simplistic) consumer messaging. It is into this gap that the openness of social media can shine a light.

The 1MillionShirts experience highlights a few pifalls that other much bigger businesses are getting into, in the quest to make ’cause the new green’ (as someone said to me the other day).

• There’s an app for that: the ‘gadgetization’ of social change – Gifts-in-kind, and other product based approaches offer an attractive impression of practical, quantifiable impact . Gifts in kind, such as 1MillionShirts and food drives, buy one-give one schemes for anything from solar lights to laptops to shoes, and cause related marketing such as box tops for education and One water, all aim to give the impressission of direct connection and impact. But social transformation does not take place throgh the shipment of gadgets, or even through the agregation

Cause related…the gadgets, the wizards and the perpetual motion machine

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Maya Forstater


of well managed projects, but through politics, government, business and social movements that shift the basis of opportunity. None of these programmes give any clue as to how their shipments of products might support (or undermine) such change.

• Don’t look at the man behind the curtain – making the organisation invisible. By focusing on making a clear link between the giver (or consumer), the proposed solution and individual recipient, C2P approaches render the organisation behind them invisible. But it is the organisation, it’s objectives, strategy and implementation, that determine how effectively these product based interventions can be. And it is organisations that can learn and be held accountable. When people give to an organisation with a single product solution – be it malaria nets, vaccines, lifestraws, playpumps or clitroral reconstruction surgery they are taking a bet not only that the solution is a good thing, but that the organisation can deliver that solution effectively and

responsively.• Perpetual motion machines

– the 100% efficient gift. Gifts in kind give the impression of reaching the fabled (and nonsensical) goal of 100% donation with no administrative cost – someone donates a can of soup, someone gets a can of soup. But looked at through an organisational lens, it becomes clearer that donors, are really giving the cost of the item to the organisation. Would people donate money to a food bank if it was clear that that its method for sourcing food involves buying products at retail price and sending them on a round trip from depot to supermarket to households and back to a distribution point?

One of the key arguments for business involvement in social challenges is that they bring new discipline, efficiency and innovation to old and intractable problems. But the danger with gifts in kind and cause related marketing programs is that are optimised for a support raising niche rather than a problem solving niche. The incentives are to get better and better at giving

consumers the feel-good impression they want without necessarily getting any better at helping people solve problems.

Jason, and others falling for these pitfalls argue that they are responding to reality; doing what they can as marketers to mobilise people’s limited goodwill and attention span for a good cause. Consumers don’t want to know about the complications of hard solutions to complex problems, organisational effectiveness and efficient use of resources. This is true I am sure, but at one time it would have been said that consumers don’t buy soup in cans, don’t fly in airplanes or don’t send daily text messages to random strangers. Organisations that take on the mission of action for a good cause have a responsibility to do their own due diligence and to design their approach for effectiveness and learning. Every new cause related marketing or fundraising campaign that relies on gadgetization, Wizard of Oz tricks and perpetual motion machines only serves to make consumers less, not more informed.

Doubtlessly there will be more Jasons, and some of them will command much


bigger marketing budgets, but as the 1MillionShirts experience highlights, social media increasingly means that if your business model is one that would fall apart if all of the stakeholders in your value chain could talk to each other, then you you have a business model that is in danger of falling apart.

Conversely if you can find a way to learn from stakeholders and drive performance through transparency, you may be able to innovate your way to a making a real difference.


New direction

In the past week I’ve learned a lot of things. One of those things that has become crystal clear is that I offended some people with the messaging on the website. This was 100% never my intention and I take full blame and have apologized for it, and am apologizing again publicly. I haven’t immediately changed the messaging because I don’t just want to strip the site bare of content, I want to get it right. The one thing that will change as soon as possible is the tagline on the main image of the website from “Help us send one million T-shirts

to the people of Africa.” to “Help us reach our goal of one million T-shirts donated.” The image itself may change as well if that has been deemed offensive.

1MillionShirts is here to stay. It is not going anywhere and negativity, cynicism and criticism will not stop what we are trying to do. From the good criticism and thoughtfulness of the right people (meet: @tmsruge & @mjamme) we are learning that what we were trying to do was wrong. While on the surface it may look like there are people in villages and countries

in Africa that could use clothing, there is a bigger issue and we would have done more harm than good by simply donating 1,000,000 T-shirts.

One thing I personally want to do with this project is to help educate people who were or are in the same position I am. There isn’t a clear resource that explains the ins and outs of what people in other countries around the world need. I’m not saying I’m going to create that, what I am going to try to do is educate people through this website as I continue to learn.

The important item to note about 1MillionShirts is that we are going to use T-shirts as the vehicle to help sustainable efforts in specific areas that the charities we choose to work with are involved in. Plain and simple, the money that you would have or are going to donate with your T-shirt(s) will no longer be paying for expensive and inefficient shipping costs to send T-shirts anywhere. That money will now be going to help people build wells, schools, homes, etc. The specific places and regions where this will be happening will be defined shortly and we want to make sure we get it right this time and don’t

Listening, learning and shifting focus

www.1millionshirts.org@iwearyourshirt

Jason Sadler (1 Million Shirts)


generalize anything.

So what will happen with the 1,000,000 T-shirts that get donated? We haven’t made the ultimate decision yet. The one thing we do know is that we’ll be storing the T-shirts for disaster relief when clothing is needed as an ancillary item. We’ll also be talking to homeless shelters across the U.S. and looking to partner with organizations who can use second hand T-shirts to turn a profit and that money then goes back to our mission. For the time being, yes, you can still donate T-shirts and feel good that they will be making a positive impact.

I was hesitant to write this blog post at all without concrete answers, but I wanted to get something out there to keep up with the other blog posts being written about 1MillionShirts. There are 50+ posts on 1MillionShirts now, feel free to try to get caught up if you have a few hours.

I’m hoping we have a more clearly defined mission by the of this week and can refocus on our energies in the proper direction. Thank you everyone for your continued support and I know that we’ll turn this project into

something positive and great. We don’t just have good intentions, we have the determination and desire to make a difference by doing.


An aggregated list

Within the past few days there has been a torrent of blog posts and tweets about yet another organization shipping donated goods overseas. Donated goods are, in general, bad aid. I’ve written numerous posts on the problems with donated goods as well as a set of questions to help donors determine if they should send donated goods.

Unfortunately, donating goods is so appealing to the uninformed donor that these programs continue to flourish. While donated goods are a

common problem in the aid world, the recent 1MillionShirts campaign touched a nerve with aid workers and has created a flurry of blog posts on the topic which eventually led to a roundtable discussion on the topic.

Editors’ note: Visit Good Intentions Are Not Enough to read Saundra’s post “What aid workers think of the 1MillionShirts campaign” and her aggregated list of posts about good aid and bad aid.

What aid workers think of the 1MillionShirts campaign

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Saundra Schimmelpfennig

Illustration by: Lulu Kitololo

No Tees Please

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