An NGO Advertising Campaign!?

On public demand this post is republished with a picture of one of the billboards!

There is currently a massive advertising campaign across Tanzania. Everywhere you look the billboards are depicting happy Tanzanians with the accompanying texts:

“NGO's: The voice of the voiceless”

“NGO's: Caring for your community”

And my favourite: “NGOs are creative and innovative"

Being a rather cynical man when it comes to NGOs, I cannot stop my curiosity when the aid community launches such a massive information campaign. What is the purpose of the campaign, who funds it, and who are the targets?

A closer look at the posters reveales the text “Celebrate/Shangalia”. A quick search on the internet further reveals that the campaign is launched by USAID Tanzania’s largest democracy and governance program, Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Programme (TAPP). So this is in other words a donor funded campaign and not an attempt by the NGOs themselves to further their cause.

In the words of TAPP: “The Shangalia/Celebrate NGOs campaign promotes the positive work and messages of Tanzanian NGOs, and was also developed after conducting focus groups to discern the public’s opinion about NGOs”. So there we have the purpose! The donor community is worried about the receiving public's opinions about NGOs and feel that a good old-fashioned information campaign should solve the problem.

This matter is really starting to stink in my opinion. Instead of looking into the causes of the bad reputation of NGOs among the public, the donor community assumes that it is a problem of perception. No inquiries into the output of NGOs and no long-term assessments of the effects created by NGOs. The reason for this is perhaps easy enough to figure out anyway...

It is, however, not until I look up the word “Shangalia” in the Kiswahili dictionary that my stomach begins to turn.. Shangalia means to “receive (with joy and enthusiasm)”. Humanitarian and civil society organisations are non-profit, and their purpose is to make life better for people. If you need to launch a massive advertising campaign to get this message across to the receiving public, you are doing something seriously wrong! But damned are those who question the good heart of the humanitarians!

No - shut up and receive with joy and enthusiasm!