In this crazy busy world, where most people have time and space for at best one underpinning logic to understand global poverty, thinking it is about relatively small transfers of money from rich to poor leaves no room for more vital truths, the most important being that mass poverty is persistent and widespread because of how we organize power and resources that create and perpetuate it.
If what you are interested in is getting other people to do things – which is what campaigning and lobbying all about - the story you wrap and cast them in is all-important. The story sets the tone, the parameters, indeed the very logic that is used to respond. Bob, Bono and the ONE crew know this, which is how they managed to get right-wingers like Jesse Helms and president Bush on board.
The real challenge now is to move aid out of the role as primary protagonist in the bigger development story and find ways to capture the public’s imagination around the root causes of poverty and inequality.
There are some broader lessons to be learnt about how communication works, and how we can best engage the public everywhere to support global development.
--Excerpt from Totems and Stories: Lessons from "Give Us the Money", written by the Global Campaigns Director of BMGF
No comments:
Post a Comment