Dear Jas- er- I mean- World Vision

An Open Letter to World Vision about their Plans to Distribute Unwanted Superbowl T-Shirts

Dear World Vision,

You are among the world’s largest, most established and most recognized non-governmental organizations. In 2009 you were responsible for over USD 2.5 billion in donated goods, services and financial support. You work in 96 countries on 5 continents, providing a wide range of services. You have been carrying out development activities since 1953. You are signatory to the Red Cross Code of Conduct and the INGO Accountability Charter. You have been a part of the creation of the Sphere Project, and involved in programs such as the Humanitarian Accountability Project (HAP), the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Practice (ALNAP), People in Aid (PIA) and the Emergency Capacity Building Project (ECB).

So where were you when we were talking about t-shirts last year?

Last year a social entrepreneur named Jason suggested using his online networks to source a million t-shirts for poor unclothed masses in Africa. He was soundly routed by the online community of aid workers who, quite rightly, claimed that this was a bad idea which had no foundation in best aid practice. There was quite a bit of noise made at the time.

Why, then, are you proposing to send 100,000 unwanted t-shirts from the losing Superbowl team to poor communities in the name of Gifts in Kind (GIK?). We all know it’s bad practice. You know it’s bad practice. Please could you come up with a more appropriate course of action.

We all understand that GIK benefits your bottom line, and the bottom line of the donating companies too courtesy of tax-breaks. Saundra has done a great job of explaining that to us here.

It’s also worth noting that it’s not just your head office that benefits, but your field offices as well, because they also have to keep their overhead-to-field-expenditure ratio sweet if they want to keep getting funded. It beefs up their projects so they can justify their staffing levels. It also allows them to give out stuff that makes communities like them (if they do it right)- even useless stuff like t-shirts, because everybody likes to receive gifts, even useless ones. So we get that there are organizational pressures to do this.

But none of this makes it right.

The fact is, it’s just bad practice. It’s usually bad for the local economy. It breeds an expectation among communities of handouts from NGOs. It doesn’t really benefit anybody. There’s a whole host of other costs associated with this process- storage, shipping, customs, distribution- and even if these are carried by somebody else and not you, somebody is paying a substantial amount of money for an activity that is largely valueless. Those of us in this industry have been to enough poor countries to know that very few people genuinely lack t-shirts, and even if they do, there are probably a lot more things they’d rather you spend your time doing. Like spending the shipping and distribution funds of unwanted t-shirts on improving water and sanitation programs, or vaccinating children against childhood diseases- the sort of thing that actually kills kids.

Last time I checked, the World Health Organization had no global figures on fatalities caused by lack of t-shirts.

But anyway, when you unpack it all, it’s really just bad aid.

Another thing I’d like to raise with you: Have you thought about the message you’re sending by embracing these t-shirt cast-offs? Never mind the indignity of giving a bunch of poor people overseas the t-shirts that no Americans want to wear because they belong to a team that never won. What I’m talking about is the practice of the American clothing industry printing 100,000 t-shirts that it knows nobody will want to wear. Do you think this is the sort of behaviour that an organization with an ethos like World Vision should be embracing?

Do you think you should instead be turning to the American public and saying to them, “How can you justify this sort of disgusting wastage on such a symbolic level- mass-producing something in the public eye that you know will be thrown away- when there are billions of people living in absolute poverty?” Couldn’t you use the Superbowl platform as a great opportunity, together with other like-minded organizations, to instead remind the American people to think about their consumption and waste habits as citizens in an increasingly interconnected global community, and remind them how privileged they are to enjoy such opulence?

I would be very interested to know how your support of this practice fits with your Christian identity and the notion of being stewards of an earth that God has given you to take care of (Gen 1:29, Gen 2:15).

As Saundra’s so elequently put, Jason was able to change his attitude and practice based on the feedback he received when his mistake was made, and the same challenge lies before you. Please could you, in your position as a leading humanitarian relief and development agency, consider changing your practices around GIK so that they are first and foremost in the interest of people in underpriveleged communities, and are not driven by corporations and industries who give SWEDOW to get tax-breaks (we should have a seperate conversation about food-aid at some point as well).

You need to understand that when a professional development agency like World Vision does something thoughtless like this, it undermines the voices of the rest of us trying to push for smarter aid. And, quite frankly, when you replicate a half-baked idea that was so highly and publically criticized very recently, it really undermines your credibility too.

Just while we’re talking, could you please stop caring about what your percentage of overheads looks like vis-a-vis your field costs. We all know that this doesn’t really have a wit to do about your organizational impact, but the longer you keep fretting about it on your annual reports, the more uninformed people will think that it does. Instead, remain transparent, ensure that your support costs are being spent in ways that make your field impact more efficient and in favour of the communities we’re all supposed to be serving, and trust the public to understand the work you do. They will trust you more for it. There are a lot of us out there trying to push this message on behalf of all NGOs and SmartAid practicioners out there, so the sooner you can get with this program, the better.

Thanks for your time.

-MA

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