McLeod Group Blog, December 2, 2016
It’s the time of year when our media overflow with requests for funding – with the implication that buying a goat or sponsoring a child will ‘save’ a family. The fact that these fundraising efforts are so ubiquitous and so successful shows that Canadians badly want to do something about global poverty and to contribute to sustainable development. But these appeals, based on the engaging image of a goat (or chickens, or bed nets, or ...
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McLeod Group Blog, Feb. 16, 2015
‘It used to be that the best way to raise money for the developing world was to show the abject poverty that could be found there, but NGOs are finding that tactic no longer works.’ So says Nathaniel Whittemore in a thoughtful article—‘The Rise and Fall of Poverty Porn’—which talks about focusing on solutions rather than symptoms.
Is he right? Has the ‘pornography of poverty’ declined? Is it true that it doesn’t work? If you ...
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November 29, 2013
When disasters strike, Canadians respond generously. At no time has this been more evident than during large calamities such as the Asian Tsunami in 2004 and the Haiti Earthquake of 2010.
But it may come as a surprise to learn that Canadians, on average, are considerably less generous than the citizens of some other countries. The current response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines provides an interesting example. In the 10 days that followed the typhoon, individual Canadians donated ...
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