White Saviour

I'm involved with some projects in one of the poorest African countries. The process and the aims are massively different from the way charities operated in the past.

All the small projects that I know aim for the groups to be totally self-sufficient within quite a short term. The resident westerners talk to the locals to find out what they want to do and for the result to be. Then they bring their knowledge of facilitating projects to the task.
They find local people to train the participants wherever possible (I'd say 95% of the time), they provide transport to towns where materials can be bought (the nearest sizeable town to these projects is almost four hours away) and they support until the group is fully trained (in things like book-keeping as well as whatever skill (sewing for example) and able to cut the strings. The financial help might only be at the beginning (say, funding for the sewing machines for sewing groups, and the tools for the carvers) and the rest is simply bringing project experience and general encouragement.

The only time that I've known foreign volunteers to come out to these projects is in areas where no locals have the expertise (for example a physiotherapist to do some basic training in handling and facilitating mobility for their disabled family member, for carers in the villages).

The reactive handouts thing isn't as common as it used to be, and safeguarding and careful management of funding is now paramount.

God, I never thought I’d say this but I’m with Ed Sheeran on this one. The reason we pay international aid is because we colonised Africa, stripped it of its natural resources and enslaved its people. That’s the wealth we used to build infrastructure, industry, the NHS - all the things that make us feel like a wealthy nation now. Consider it like interest on a loan if you like - we owe something to the rest of the world, for a long long time, if not forever.

If Bob Geldof gave such a shit he should round up his mates and get them all to pay their frigging taxes 😂

Who gives a rats ass about Edd Sheeran.

However Africa and the poverty of some of its nations are something that we should and western governments need to do something to help.

See my previous post. No I don't need some lecturer doing amateur analysis on why people want a certain job and I have always, in over 70 years, found medical professionals were willing to listen and don't need your lecturer implying that we are all so stupid we can't advocate for ourselves. If you think he's right you have little respect for your patients.

I've only ever had one medical person sweep in and tell me what to do and that was a doctor who wouldn't accept I didn't want amnio due to my age. He was rude about it. Fortunately my Consultant was completely different and supportive. I've only ever had one experience like that and when I've needed treatment or an operation it has been a discussion. Same when 2 of my kids needed surgery. As long as the medical professional could do their job and listen to me I don't care if they've had some lecturer doing amateur psycho analysis with them about their motivation.

So are you saying they weren't treated with respect? I've never heard that. As I said if I'm starving and someone is giving me food I don't think I'm going to be fretting about them patronising me. I thought this was about other Africans objecting to Africa and Africans being depicted in a certain way that they don't like.

I took that to mean that celebrating Christmas is quite low on your list of priorities when there's no food to put on the table. It had nothing to do with religion.

The difference is that when you train to work in healthcare, it's not just about learning anatomy and physiology. A lot of it is about ethics, morals, self-reflection and standard of care. We were master students, not freshly fledged college graduates. That specific lecture was vital to shape us as clinicians and avoid us falling into the patterns of behaviour that so many complain about. I ask myself every day whether something I am doing is driven by what the patient knows is best for them or whether it is something that I find more comfortable for myself.
And the lecturer don't turn around and said anything to us. We came to that conclusion ourselves simply by examining what is below the superficial layers of thought. It's ok to recognize that you are not perfect and that your must reflect on and mitigate your own biases.

From what you’re saying, it seems you think that the locals do not already have skills etc to put to work. Please remember that the NHS for instance, employs a lot of these so called unskilled locals, to do skilled jobs in the UK.

The bigger problem is corrupt governments in those countries coupled with, our corrupt governments and business leaders who go into those countries to exploit the situation. Alongside, the masses of debt Africa as a continent owes to our governments who just keep adding on to in the form of aid and interest.

The issue is much more complicated and longstanding than singing a song or going in a building something. The west needs to take responsibility for some of the issues in the African continent and actively stop hindering progress. Pretending that African is just some dire country with no opportunity to be self sufficient, is a big part of the problem!

It’s all very well saying we shouldn’t send aid, we shouldn’t send volunteers, we shouldn’t build hospitals and offer free medical treatment etc - we should empower the local people to develop the skills and do it themselves….BUT it’s been said many times (and is widely acknowledged) that the people in power in many of these countries are corrupt. So how do we empower the locals? How do we set up a college to train nurses, builders, carpenters, teachers? We can’t just turn up and establish these colleges ourselves. It has to go through local government officials, who are corrupt, and would use the “money to build a teacher training college” on their house and garden!

Does the song still make money for charities? Is so it seems silly to cancel it, can’t the lyrics just be changed instead.

I get the point that the song is factually incorrect but did find Ed Sheeran’s recent social media post annoying the way he hoped his (new!) personal stance was a forward facing one. He isn’t worried about the song he just doesn’t want to get cancelled.

I find this a quite depressing approach from the lecturer tbh. You have a lot of new students, eager to learn and hoping to help. They are choosing to train for a profession that will be hard work, plenty of unsociable hours and relatively low pay. Then the lecturer turns round and says "well, actually, your reasons for wanting to go into this stressful job are completely selfish". Why would anyone bother? It's so negative and quite offensive. And no, I don't work in healthcare, I chose a much less stressful and challenging career, like the majority do.

I can see both sides of this, but the one thing I am sure of is that I don't give a tuppenny toss what the millionaire Bob Geldof thinks about it

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Lots of these young African people are working alongside these students. Difference being... they have to be paid. Which often isn't possible becuase... did you know that there are huge economic challenges in large parts of Africa and communities don't have the resources. And I bet your next point will be ,"well, if they're out of work as so many people are, perhaps they should use free labour as a way to get experience and contacts then" but that completely and totally misses the deep seated challenges experienced by these communities.

If you've never been part of these communities then you really have no idea. Many of these projects whether they're about education or health or welfare simply cannot be funded without outside support. The one my brother works on, for example, now employs over 200 people, the vast bulk of whom are local. The funding received from international donors supports their training, pays their salaries (which often also has to include accomodation and transport as it's in very rural areas) all so that they can provide educational services in the broader community and yes, further training for others. They are building generational wealth by helping children achieve sufficient education to go to university or get better jobs, often that then feeds back into their communities in terms of skills and cash. It's a virtuous cycle and yes, part of it started with bring loads of young rich people from westernised countries to visit and help.....

Feel like i need to edit to add that I'm not suggesting that teenagers bujilding orphanages is the holy grail of helping African communities! I'm just making the point that all of this is a great deal more complicated than you seem to think it is.

I think people just like to moan to be honest . As others have said it did what it was meant to at the time 🤷‍♀️

You can't be serious.

My thoughts are as follows:

1. I'd rather 100% of aid money went to where it was needed rather than lining the greedy pockets of the corrupt, but I don't know how to stop that and such a small % of my money goes out I'm not going to complain
2. People who weren't around then and cba even reading about Band Aid have no business talking about White Saviours - there was a full on famine at the time

I don't think it should happen again. The last one was ill-thought out - like a different poster said, we know better how to support and should be doing it like that. Rehashing old songs is so lazy.

You can indeed, but you probably can't motivate hundreds of thousands of people to put their hands in their own pockets without presenting them with a truly ghastly picture of need.

Spot on, and I say this every year when the Band Aid arguments come up as they always do. Ethiopia didn't scan so they said Africa - so what. It raised tons of money and saved tons of lives. The eighties were a different time, let it go.

It was well intentioned but like everything else these days someone has to whine about the unfairness of it all.

Africa is like a bucket with a hole. It will never be full, however much aid they receive, because of the corrupt political landscape. They haven't made a lot of progress themselves over the last 40 years.

Charity begins at home for me these days I'm afraid.

It's less about playing the white saviour, more about being accused of playing the white saviour.

I recall it's a phrase used by David Lammy about Stacey Dooley when she was in Africa for Children in Need or something similar.

When people saw Stacey Dooley with an African child, most people see a woman and a child. But David Lammy sees a white woman and a black child, which makes it completely different, apparently. Perhaps he's right. Either way, his desire to play identity politics means that otherwise well-meaning people like Ed Sheeran now think twice about getting involved in good causes.

There was plenty of criticism of Band Aid back in 1984, with many pundits and bands expressing the same misgivings.

I think there is a big difference between Bob Geldof reacting to an immediate humanitarian crisis (however dodgy the lyrics might have been) in 1984, when there were fewer methods to either research or donate to charities, and the voluntourism industry now.

The situation was an immediate emergency, people - children and babies were starving right at that moment and the instinctive reaction is that money was needed to buy and send them food. At that point in time there wasn't time to build relationships, work alongside them to develop better farming techniques, buying them a goat etc etc. They needed food. Immediately.

Even now there are often emergency appeals in the wake of a disaster, by unicef or DEC which I imagine are different from longer term charity projects

This is why Live Aid makes me cringe so much. We don’t know where our money is actually going, and we know that it is at least very likely going into the pockets of corrupt governments, so why are we sending money at all? Money can’t solve problems that are prevalent in the developing world. We also have our own country to think of and all of the issue we already have.

The song is certainly very dated in the way it expresses its sentiment. However I do think its a bit ironic when white people accuse other white people of being white saviours. The only views worth listening to about this are the beneficiaries themselves. Otherwise it's just another bunch of privileged people taking it upon themselves to speak on behalf of disadvantaged people and tell other privileged people off for helping them in the wrong way. Usually without the first clue as to how the disadvantaged people feel about it.

Tbf though, if you were around at the time, children and people in Ethiopia were literally starving because of the famine and it was a way for folk in the 80s to help out.