I welcome the news that ActionAid is moving away from child sponsorship schemes, following other global NGOs in recent years (ActionAid to rethink child sponsorship as part of plan to ‘decolonise’ its work, 22 January). These schemes are colonial-like from a global analytical perspective, and local residents have long subverted and refuted their terms because they represent “poverty porn”. They also reify the community in ways that don’t work for those who sign up for them.
Research in Tanzania showed that local staff were uneasy with the core premise. But pressures came from further up the chain, and it was often a pragmatic choice to retain a key source of unrestricted funding (for other fantastic advocacy work that project-based NGOs can’t always do).
Nevertheless, relations between NGO staff and families who had a sponsored child could be fraught, and it was often up to an unsalaried community volunteer to manage these difficult tensions – thankless and endless work.
Recent approaches, like that of GiveDirectly, innovate less colonial-like models whereby money is given so that people can invest in their futures without conditions or agendas, or being forced to exchange letters or photographs with donors. Such schemes are not without their issues, but mark a considerable improvement.
Kathy Dodworth
Research fellow, King’s College London
• As a longstanding ActionAid supporter, I was astonished to read the vituperative coverage of the change of emphasis in this charity’s work and its sudden pejorative dismissal of its longstanding child sponsorship programme and the motives of its supporters.
Through its scheme, I have proudly sponsored community development, children and women’s education, and their welfare and livelihood skills development, including women’s empowerment, equality and justice training, all shaped by community needs and voices. Or so I believed. I have never been asked by the charity to “choose” a child from a photograph.
The researcher Themrise Khan, quoted in your article, says that governments should fund education, state welfare systems and healthcare, but the truth of the matter is that they do not.
Is it now so politically incorrect to try to improve the lives of all children and women everywhere because this is “paternalistic” and “transactional”, as Taahra Ghazi, ActionAid’s co-chief executive, states? If so, heaven help all females, but bring on the debate.
Perhaps ActionAid’s new co-chief executives need to pause and consider if they are actually guilty of the paternalism of which they accuse their supporters. A little bit of communication, information and participatory engagement by the charity with its own community of supporters and fewer attacks may well do less to alienate those of us who, with real commitment, have raised funds and donated to support women and children.
As for community “sisterhoods” of support for ActionAid? No harm in dreaming big.
Christine Marshall
Barney, Norfolk
