Black British MP David Lammy has written a stinging critique of Red Nose Day – the biennial British fundraising event where a lot of the money goes to charities in Africa.
To help raise funds, British celebrities are filmed on the continent visiting orphanages and clinics and imploring people to donate to help the people they meet. The films are broadcast on the BBC during a fundraising evening.
Writing in the Guardian , Mr Lammy says he is worried about what impression this makes:
Comic Relief has tattooed images of poverty in the African continent to the point where few of us can escape the guilt of not donating. The result: a tidal wave of donations, but little to challenge the… interpretation of an Africa ‘where nothing ever grows’.”
When the MP asked his son, who is mixed race, why he thought people should donate to Red Nose Day, he said:
But we have to help the poor people in Africa, daddy.”
In response he wants a less patronising approach:
We must have voices debating debt and dictatorship, trade agreements and climate change, education and entrepreneurship – not just appeals for people to phone in and pledge a few pounds.”
Musician Ed Sheeran is one of the celebrities who recently travelled to the continent.
He went to Liberia and visited a school in Monrovia where he met some children who had been abandoned.
Cherry Seaborn
Source – BBC
