redefining charity and non-profit Marketing

I launched a donation campaign using a poster and it didn't work. Do you know why??

It is not sad children, with big yellow teary eyes, half-covered by a once white brown t-shirt, exposing their abnormally redundant bellies due to nutritional deficiencies and skinny feet underneath...

Nor is it the emaciated mother with a dry breast plunged into the mouth of a skeletal baby...

Nor are they smiling, dirt-covered children huddled together on a classroom bench with a roof of dried grass...

Or grim figures and stories to make John the Fearless cry, "once a minute a child dies of hunger in Africa, Afghanistan"...

This is nothing like what you see in the advertisements or posters for charities in Africa abounding on the Internet and in every street corner in European cities, especially in times of nativity.

Apparently, this is normal; this is how we humans function. We need images and stories like these to awaken the empathy that many have buried deep inside.?Strong emotions such as sadness, guilt, happiness that comes from having been a hero and useful in this life, the secret and infinite quest of humanity: we need them to dip our hands into our wallets and do works of charity.?

These images also reassure us; they confirm us that we are helping the needy. In this world governed by the laws of the jungle, where the strongest eat the bread of the weakest, we do not want to give to those who already have some.?

Moreover, we need these images to silence our intellect, which knows that we can do anything by working hard, and reassures us that we do not have to feel guilty for the fate of those in need or pity them, and reproaches them for being responsible for their misfortunes: They would not be where they are if they did not have so many children, if their governments were not so corrupt, if....?

Except that campaigns for the same issues in European countries use images of gay children and families, and it works quite well. No?

Maybe because hope for the good we envision is a sufficiently persuasive emotion.

What if we did the same for all cases? What if instead of visualising the negative, we visualised the positive that we project?

Of course, these stories, these photos and these dark figures exist and we must say so.

But they should be told as one of several stories in Africa. Africa should no longer be only associated with disaster.

We should be able to communicate that it is the story of poverty, war and famine and not the story of a continent and a country.

We also need to redefine charity:

I like to refer to the Bible for this definition. Whether one believes in it or not, I find this definition of poverty powerful. In 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, (New international Version) it is written,

4?Love is patient,love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5?It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking,?it is not easily angered,?it keeps no record of wrongs.?6?Love does not delight in evil?but rejoices with the truth.?7?It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1. It is necessary to give in the long term:

what would have been the point of paying for the schooling of the children of a community in Mali and at the same time sowing in the whole African community the feeling of being genetically needy? Can Africans feel like a hero and the architect of one's future if the representation they see about themselves is that of a subject?

And what about the tolerant world we want to build, our project to break down prejudice and building bridges across nations?

How can European children ever see their African counterpart equal if they have seen them all childhood only sitting in front of empty plates? No wonder my classmates, despite being in their university years and having well-developed minds and intellects, still thought that if I had a childhood like theirs, it must be because my father was a Cameroonian minister who embezzled government money.

2. The giving hand does not speak

We have to understand that the hand does not speak, it gives, as a Cameroonian adage says. The focus is on the action, neither the actor, nor the receiver.

And if this other German adage advising to give and speak to motivate others to do the same is also true, I still refer to the previous lines: Put the focus on the action, keep the person dignity and focus on the good one projects for this situation.

3. You have to give out of love for humanity

After all giving is a lifestyle, not a Christmas style!