Barefoot on Broadway (Warning: gross feet pics)

Vivek Nemana is an NYU graduate student and a student worker at DRI. I’ve been working at DRI long enough to recognize bad aid, and yet my skin still tingles when I watch the TOMS Shoes’ One Day without Shoes video. I know, I KNOW…but I just can’t help being swept away by montages of beautiful young people “taking action” set to a backdrop of a dramatic Matisyahu song. So I bared my feet for the cause:

Sure, this whole event really just helps TOMS sell more shoes, and sure, it was cold and raining in New York, and sure, I solicited bewildered stares, watched mothers shield their daughters from me, and possibly contracted hepatitis, but wasn’t I raising awareness about the real, complex challenges facing developing countries? Because wouldn’t African people hate to be shoeless on a rainy day in the Village, too? Also, do you think I could be a foot model?

TOMS, a for-profit shoe company, likes to use highfalutin’ NGO buzzwords like “accountability,” “awareness” and “change” in its marketing. It just published its first “giving report.” Which is fantastic…except that the campaign reinforces the stereotype that Africans are so pathetically destitute that they need anything we can give them, while allowing us to ignore both the condescending implication that the only hope for the poor is our charity, and the negative impacts of gifts-in-kind on local economies.

I also attended a One Day Without Shoes event held by the TOMS Shoes club at NYU. When I prodded my fellow students a bit about why they supported TOMS, the main message I came away with (and here please note my sample size n=2) was that people should buy the shoes because, with little time and disposable income to spare, it’s an easy way to be charitable with the things we do already.

In a way the attitude itself makes sense – it’s a fundamental economic principle -- but it manifests itself in a giving model (and this goes for BOGO and gifts-in-kind in general) that runs backwards. Instead of taking a fundamental problem that people face – say, unsafe conditions for children – and thinking of what they need to help solve it, this model takes a solution – shoes – and staples it to some problem that people have. And by attempting to view the whole spectrum of issues through this single-dimensional proto-solution, it’s easy to forget about all the unintended consequences.

It’s obvious that the TOMS aid-vertising works, that it can successfully generate a huge grassroots-style movement of well-intentioned people by not only playing into their sense of justice but also providing them with a way to “do something.” But, as I ended my own half-hearted participation in One Day Without Shoes, I remained unconvinced that easy aid could ever be good aid.

What I am certain of, however, is that nobody should EVER have to walk around barefoot in Greenwich Village.

World Vision responds to blogger questions

Editor's Note 10:45 am 2/18/2011: Thanks to all the commentators, you really wrote a new post for us today. We have emailed World Vision follow up questions, especially taking them up on their offer to provide examples below. They said they will respond by middle of next week as they get their national offices to respond. In an email to the communications  department at World Vision, we collected and forwarded a few of the questions posed by aid bloggers in their posts (now up to 50, and counting) about the controversy over the 100,000 misprinted NFL T-shirts World Vision distributes as gifts-in-kind aid every year. On Wednesday evening we received World Vision's response, which we are publishing here in full:

1. Can WV show that they rigorously assess the needs of the communities they work in for gifts-in-kind (GIK)?

World Vision’s assessments of the need for supplies and of the impact a supply donation may have on the local economy are done by individual national offices as part of a strategic programmatic response.  As a result, when we set our strategy for GIK procurement each year, we ask each national office send us requests for resources they need and to do so after assessing the need for supplies and their ability to procure supplies locally.

The rigor of those assessments varies based on the national office providing the information.  Each World Vision office is an independent entity, with its own board and charter.  World Vision has deliberately worked within its international partnership to increasingly empower national offices regarding the assessment, design and implementation of its programs.

If it’s helpful, I can try to get you copies of some example assessments from some national offices so that you can get a sense of what those assessments look like.

2. Why does WV use a much larger share of GIK than other similarly sized nonprofits?

Depending on how you calculate the “size” of a non-profit (annual revenue, number of countries of operation, staff size, etc), World Vision doesn’t use a much larger share of GIK than other non-profits.

In fact, there are really no other organizations with a comparable size to World Vision, U.S. with the same operational mandate.

3. How did WV calculate the ‘fair market value’ for these shirts?

World Vision hasn’t valued this year’s donation of NFL-related clothing because we have not received the products yet. Unfortunately, the numbers listed in the blog post and a press release shouldn’t have been released – they were rough estimates that weren’t related to each other and don’t reflect how World Vision will value the clothing.

In general, World Vision calculates “fair market value” for any of its donated supplies based on standards set by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).  As a side note, the FASB recently established a new definition for valuing supply donations and as a result, there is a great deal more clarity in the way that all non-profits value supply donations.  While not all NGOs have yet implemented the new FASB standards, World Vision has.

This process is based on current standards required to value all forms of GIK donations.  While there may be a discussion about what the value of a particular item should be, the objective standards we follow are essential to guide our valuation approach.  It may worth discussing whether the current standards need to be improved; but for now, those are the standards with which we need to comply.

4. Has WV tried to evaluate the results of this program? Can WV point to any evidence that the 15-year distribution of Super Bowl T-shirts has "facilitate[d] good, sustainable development"?

The short answer is “no” because the Super Bowl clothing isn’t a program. It’s a donation. We evaluate the results of our programs.  Some programs are successful. Others less so.  But their success is based on the quality of the program’s assessment, design and implementation, not solely on the use of one tool or another.

Many of the programs where we use GIK have been enormously successful in facilitating good, sustainable development.  Our evidence for that would be individual program evaluations from a variety of national offices, but we can provide some examples if those are helpful.

In Summary: For World Vision, GIK is a resource in a robust tool kit.  We endeavor to use it in situations where it’s appropriate and in ways that are skilled, but like any tool, it’s not inherently helpful or hurtful.  A hammer can do a great deal of damage if you use it poorly, but it can also be a necessary piece of equipment when you’re trying to build something.

Our perspective on this greater debate is that the resource (GIK) can be used in ways that are very helpful.  It can also be used in ways that are destructive.  The answer isn’t to toss the tool.  The answer is to make the tool work better and to become more skilled at when and how to use it. World Vision continually seeks ways to make our work more effective in all areas, including how GIK is integrated into a full development strategy and the constructive elements of this ongoing conversation are a part of that continual effort to improve.

In Zambia, Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl: Why is World Vision perpetuating discredited T-shirt aid?

Editor's Note 4: 10:45am 2/15: @saundra_s reports there are now 36 bloggers that have posted on this (excluding WV itself or its staffers), of which 35 are against. One more against here from faith perspective. Now have a Twitter hashtag #100kshirts.

Editor's Note 3: 8:45am 2/15: heard from @WorldVisionUSA finally! got this direct message on Twitter: "Thanks for following WV! For even more opportunities to get involved, check us out on Facebook."

Editor's Note 2 3:30pm: still silence from the @WorldVisionUSA palace as more bloggers post and more protesters gather outside in Aid Twitter Square.

Editor's Note 10:16am: Sorry World Vision, Aid Watch committed a major factual error due to the incompetence of one of our alleged experts. This supposed NFL and zoological expert with the initials W.E. initially got the team wrong in the picture, it is the losing 2007 team Chicago Bears.

As it has for 15 years, World Vision took credit last week for accepting the donation of 100,000 unwanted Super Bowl T-shirts from NFL merchandisers to ship to poor people across the world.

The T-shirts are the result of NFL merchandisers printing championship shirts for both teams in the Super Bowl so they’re prepared to immediately sell to fans of the winning team, whichever one that turns out to be. The merchandisers get a tax deduction for donating the losing team’s shirts (saying that the losers actually won) to World Vision, and World Vision (according to their website) ships the shirts abroad, this year to Armenia, Romania, Zambia and Nicaragua.

(Saundra S has a great post explaining the financial incentives that keep this arrangement in place. Among other things, World Vision uses the shirts to fictionally lower its overhead cost ratios, great for bragging about its efficiency.)

To quickly reiterate some of the arguments against SWEDOW (Stuff We DOn’t Want) aid:

1. It’s not needed. Seriously, neither the developing world as a whole nor the specific recipient countries named by World Vision suffer an undersupply of T-shirts.
2. It’s not cost effective. The cost of collecting, sorting, shipping and distributing bulky, low-value items like a bunch of T-shirts does not justify the (very questionable) benefit. And don’t forget to include the opportunity cost, the lost chance to allocate those same, considerable resources to provide something better, like clean water or medicine. (A World Vision PR rep told the New York times in 2007: “Where these items go, the people don’t have electricity or running water.")
3. It can perpetuate local community’s dependence on free handouts and stifle home-grown economic initiatives, not to mention putting out of business local shirt sellers.

In comparison to the storm of protest that greeted aid neophyte Jason Sadler (aka the 1 Million Shirts Guy, aka Mr. Haterade) when he launched his idea to send a million T-shirts to Africa last year, the unexemplary behavior by aid behemoth and standard-setter World Vision has provoked far fewer critical posts.

Self-preservation-minded aid bloggers who work with World Vision might be  rationally self-censoring, and we've also heard reports that some bloggers received email requests not to blog about this topic.  This episode may reveal the current limits of the burgeoning power of by-the-people aid criticism.

Then again, this week has been an auspicious one for people-power protesting policies that should have been chucked in the bin of history long ago.  As the controversy spreads, World Vision can't avoid debating these policies with their supporters and critics. Will next January see World Vision bragging about its 16th year of sending loser shirts to poor people, or will people-power finally halt this disgrace?

The “Stuff We Don’t Want” flowchart

UPDATE: Scott has taken some of your suggestions to improve the chart--Version 2.0 is below. I doubt we need to point out that if you’re about to embark on an aid project to help Africa with no actual knowledge of aid or Africa, the ire of a certain blogging development economist may not be your greatest preoccupation. And we probably also don’t need to mention that developing a simple set of standards (perhaps in the form of a basic decision tree) won’t solve all the many well-documented problems with gifts-in-kind aid.

But who knows, it might help to weed out a few misguided and potentially harmful projects, so…thanks to Scott Gilmore at Peace Dividend Trust for drawing up this handy flowchart:

Scott instructs:

Print it, laminate it, keep it in your wallet, and rest easy knowing you won’t inadvertently attract the bloodthirsty wrath concerned interest of the aid critics.

Refinements or additions, anyone?

On a related but more serious note, Saundra Schimmelpfennig recently reminded us of an earlier blog post, How to determine if an aid project is a good idea, which is basically a lesson in empathy (“…ask yourself…is this is the type of aid you would want or would something else be more helpful? Would that aid project help solve the real problem or just address a side effect of the real problem? How would that same problem best be solved in your state/neighborhood?”) to help potential individual donors make good funding decisions.

TIME magazine covers 1Million Shirts

Jason Sadler, the guy behind 1MillionShirts, didn’t know what he was up against:

Little did Sadler know that he had stumbled into a debate raging in the aid world about the best and worst ways to deliver charity, or whether to give at all. He crashed up against a rather simple theory that returned to prominence after failures during the 2004 Asian tsunami and the Haiti earthquake: wanting to do something to help is no excuse for not knowing the consequences of what you're doing.

The TIME magazine article published today, by Nick Wadhams, a Nairobi-based journalist, offers some closure to the bloggers, aid workers and aid watchers who have been following this debate since it broke out two weeks ago: Sadler “no longer plans to send the shirts to Africa. He says he will find another way to use the T-shirts he collects, possibly for disaster relief, giving them to homeless shelters or using them to create other goods.”

In addition to Bill Easterly, Kenyan Economist James Shikwati, and the aid worker and blogger known as Tales from the Hood, Wadhams quotes Kenyan journalist Rasna Warah:

"Africa is the greatest dumping ground on the planet. Everything is dumped here." Adds Warah: "The sad part is that African governments don't say no — in fact, they say 'Please send us more.' They're abdicating responsibility for their own citizens."

Read the whole thing here.

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See our previous blogs on the subject here: A suggestion for the 1MillionShirts guy Nobody wants your old T-shirts

And see an exhaustive collection of posts about 1MillionShirts here.

Nobody wants your old T-shirts

UPDATE 4/28 10:45 am answering the "be a man" video: see end of this post I guess our great Alanna Shaikh post "Nobody wants your old shoes" (2nd most popular post of all time) did not quite reach everybody. Or maybe the parallels between old T-shirts and old shoes were not widely appreciated (HT @texasinafrica)

A new clothing-themed charitable campaign from the guys behind lucrative social media marketing exercise I Wear Your Shirt is looking to get unwanted T-shirts out of your closet and onto the backs of a million people across Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Swaziland and South Africa.

The 1MillionShirts project, launched this month, is asking for used (but decent) T-shirts to be sent in with a one dollar bill to help with container costs. The shirts will then be shipped to Africa to help clothe folks in need.

The guy in the video also asks for $  from each of us because it is very expensive to send containers full of bulky low-value T-shirts all the way over to all those places somewhere in Africa. Test question: why might this fact help explain why this is "one of the worst advocacy ideas of the year" (in @texasinafrica's words).

UPDATE 4/27 10:45 am: @iwearyourshirt posts an angry video attacking me and other "Internet trolls" for daring to criticize him, challenging us to come out from behind our computers to call him on the phone directly and "be a man."

Laura has put up a constructive alternative suggestion to #1millionshirts in response to the, um, "be a man" challenge.

I of course completely agree with Laura.

As far as how to have the debate on 1 Million Shirts, it's perfectly legitimate to have a public debate on Twitter or any other forum on a very public advocacy idea that is out there. That the only acceptable alternative for @iwearyourshirt is to get a personal phone call is to suggest that public debate is not legitimate and that the design of aid projects should be negotiated in private.

Sorry, pal, that's not how democratic debate  and accountability works.  I'm sorry if you feel blind-sided by this debate, but the burden of proof was on you to check out your idea before you made it so public to a large audience.  To me, that's what it means to "be a man", oops I mean, "be a human."