Charity denounces Xmas ethical shopping

by worldwrite | November 30, 2007 at 01:31 am

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AS NGOs and celebrities urge us to buy demeaning gifts from dung to hoes and fill an ethical stocking for our peers in the developing world, the UK based charity WORLDwrite is launching two films which challenge Western low horizons and aid prescriptions.

The films which premiere on December 16th were shot in Ghana and form the final works in Chew on it’s Pricking the Missionary Position series. These films challenge Western assumptions and suggest many NGO campaigns are about making us feel good rather than helping our peers.

Director Ceri Dingle said today: “These documentaries provide salutary lessons in the run up to Xmas and suggest we should ditch the ethical items in our shopping trolley. If we want to help our peers, we need to think big and hand over the money. Everyone is getting in on the ethical shopping spree idea and the list of items has hit an all time low. Oxfam’s a share in a boar hole, build a shack for a bog or a pile of dung are a disgrace and Tesco’s modernise a mud hut are totally degrading and assume our peers want to continue to scrape by on the land and cannot be trusted to do their own Christmas shopping.”

Keeping Africa Small examines Western NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) practices in Ghana,
West Africa. However well meaning NGOs and aid agencies may be, the film draws out Ghanaian’s dissatisfaction and disgust. As David Ampofo says in the film “It is a sad reflection for mankind that when there are rockets going to the moon, they are busy preparing a rope pump for people to fetch water.”

I'm a subsistence farmer... get me out of here! reveals the reality of rural subsistence life for people in Ghana –its mud huts and
mind-numbing toil, growing just enough to feed your family. A starkly different view to western romantic notions of simple, tranquil, close to-nature existence it suggests subsistence farming is a prison sentence not a life style choice.

Producer Viv Regan adds “Who decided that Ghanaians needs are
so basic. This year’s Xmas gift catalogues are shocking and show we still think our peers in the poorest parts of the world are oh so different from us. They are not.”

The premieres and launch event for these two films will be held at:

7pm on Sunday 16th December

at the Rich Mix Cinema

35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London
E1

Full details of these films, press kits and trailers are available at http://www.worldwrite.org.uk/keepingafricasmall/
and http://www.worldwrite.org.uk/subsistencefarmer/

For
interviews, further details and press passes phone Ceri or Viv on 020
8985 5435 or email world.write@btconnect.com

Tickets include wine reception, screenings and
celebration with Ghanaian drummers and DJ and the public may purchase tickets from
http://www.justgiving.com/ghanafilmpremieres

Having seen the first three instalments of WORLDwrite’s ‘Pricking the Missionary Position’, and being amazed by subject matter, I cannot wait to see the last two.

I’m Ghanaian, born and bred in the UK, and these works have opened my eyes for I just was not aware of the issues raised by ‘Damned by Debt Relief’, ‘Think Big’ and ‘A Letter to Geldof’.

More importantly these docs presented a voice for just some of the aspirations of Africans.

If you are an individual who wants access to resources that allow you to judge without any bias around the issues of Aid/Debt Relief then these documentaries are for you.

WORLDwrite have delivered a platform for individuals affected by these commercial aid projects through allowing them to express their feelings with no cover-up.

Media coverage like this is rare and individuals interested in equality should welcome it, for at the very least they are able to weigh the two sides of the arguments and judge the true situation for themselves.

Many people bulk at the very idea of challenging such a nice thing as giving a goat to Ghana. The argument goes that if you have nothing, then a little bit more helps. And of-course when you have very little any help is thankfully received. But this is not the whole story and we should wise up to this. NGOs have been explicitly involved in redefining what development should mean for the poorest people in the developing world. This new definition breaks all connection to material growth and development. In its place people are supposed to make do and try to "develop" within the confines of sustainable development. You only have to look up the word 'sustainable' in the dictionary to know what this means - it means the status quo. This is encaspulated in the Millennium Development Goals that focus on goals that mean poor people in the developing world can look forward to developing to the point we in the UK were centuries ago. What is so shocking is that people's aspirations, people's ambitions to be so much more are discounted, as what is more important is their connection to the land. If we look forward to the weekends where we get to fill our free time, if we appreciate, if not celebrate, what technology and the advances we have in the West have provided us then DO NOT buy the ethical gifts and instead realise how demeaning these pressie truly are. Equality is non negiotable.

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