Radi-Aid: Africa For Norway

followthethings.com
Home & Auto

[A] spoof music video was released in late November 2012 at the beginning of the Christmas holiday season, a season of giving (Source: Jefferess 2013, p.74).

[A] rapper urges Africans to donate their old radiators to help Norwegians survive the winter (Source: Anon 2012, np link).

The only video footage of Norway is of winter storms, which portray the country as an environmental and humanitarian disaster (Source: Cameron 2015, p283).

People in Norway are freezing to death. Thank goodness some generous Africans are sending help (Source: Evans 2013, p.179).

The [music] video comes from the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund, a development organization in Norway that deploys funding and technical assistance to young people in Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa as well as Bolivia and Nicaragua (Source: Olopade 2012, np link).

To those wondering if it’s a spoof/fake et cetera … yes – of course it is. These people aren’t playing around though. Their effort is a serious critique of misguided development, and of the Western media coverage which often accompanies it (Source: Asuka Stiles 2013, np link).

Our initial idea was to do something like a parody of Band Aid, so that’s definitely the feel we want you to get when you’re watching the video (Source: Riise in Chandler 2012c, np link).

Honestly, I find Band Aid really offensive. ‘Where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow’ – I mean, come on! I understand their motivation for writing this in 1984 – there was widespread hunger in Ethiopia that needed instant attention. But the song and its video is so patronising, and so full of a top-down understanding of how people in the world relate to each other, that my motive behind making a Band Aid parody was to reach all the people who have sort of succumbed to this skewed image of the world (Source: Riise in Chandler 2012b, np link).

To the people that didn’t notice. This is a parody of white savior industrial complex. And yes it is funny (Source: @thefermiparadox 2014, np link).

So when I see starving children I’m bound to ask myself what I can do to help. Please don’t doubt my intentions because of that. It’s not like I want to colonize your land just because of that. I’m only trying to behave like a fellow human being (Source: Realbillball 2015, np link).

Hi, I’ve seen you video and i felt really sorry for those poor norwegians. I’d like to give some time to help and also bring some radiators, blankets or anything that could be useful. Is there a way to volunteer in your ngo or in a school. I don’t have any qualifications but i’m really motivated and I’m sure I could teach a lot of things from my country to these norwegian kids (Source: OPierreLouisO 2016, np link)!

We would love to sort ourselves out, but the game has been rigged against us for such a long time we are forever in a cycle of trying to get rid of corrupt leaders, getting fair trade deals and having entitled popstars telling us what we need (Source: Tshomie in Lennon 2014, np link)

Radi-Aid’s campaign videos all seek to challenge advocacy stereotypes, and they have all gone viral on YouTube and been circulated in social as well as in mainstream media (Source: Reestorff 2015, p.155).

Produced by the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH), ‘Radi-Aid’ spawned the Radiator Awards, an annual affair highlighting the worst – and best – charity ads. This year’s ceremony, held Tuesday, was preceded by the first Radiator Conference, which brought together academics, journalists and representatives from NGOs to explore the consequences of the stereotypes often seen in these videos. Many cliched images – like the common ones of Africa, showing children with flies buzzing in their eyes and helpless women balancing bundles on their heads – were created with good intentions, says SAIH Vice President Martine Jahre. And they’ve had some positive effects. She notes that studies have shown people will give more when faced with a caricature of a charity case rather than a human being. ‘We feel good when it’s us and them, and we can help them,’ she says. But there’s a danger in trying to raise money at the expense of someone’s dignity, Jahre adds, ‘and if we see these images over and over again, our expectation becomes that’ (Source: Hallett 2015, np link).

The awards were set up for the ‘fundraising video with the worst use of stereotypes’ – their point being that ‘this kind of portrayal is not only unfair to the persons portrayed in the campaign, but also hinders long-term development and the fight against poverty’ (Source: Jabbar 2014, np link).

[We] get a lot of reactions from all over the world now – which, really, we hadn’t anticipated. But the reactions from people in Africa are – they have only been positive so far. There has been – a few negative reactions. Some of the reactions have been, you know, along the lines that you just mentioned; that oh, but you’re also European, and you’re criticizing this, and you’re also one of these organizations. But funny enough, the people actually, you know, coming forth with this kind of criticism are all in Europe or in the U.S. So – I mean, the people that we talk on behalf of, in the video, have no problem with this (Source: Evans & Martin 2012, np link).