One of my favourite social media campaigns is Mama Hope ‘Stop the Pity’ campaign. The first video they made was a youtube video called ‘Commando‘ that went viral.
Its a video of a 9 year old boy called Alex from Tanzania summarizing the film Commando. The video is cut between Alex animatedly telling the story and giving insights into Arnold Sschwarzenegger’s character interspersed with clips of the film itself.
The video is very clever because it is not what you expect from a charity organization working in a developing country. We are so used to seeing images of “starving children”, “despondent mothers” disease, war and death when it comes to the ‘developing world. As many of Westerners haven’t been to developing countries it shows what power and influence the media has in creating and building on existing stereotypes that we hold ourselves.
I had the opportunity to volunteer in Ghana last year for 4 month. Sure, there are people living in very different circumstances to here in Ireland, there is mass poverty, lack of education and disease in the country but that is only one side to the country. There are wonderful people living, working, growing their communities, using social media,watching films and living not dissimilar lives to people in the West. Sure the environment is different and the standard of living is not comparable to that in the West but in the end of the day people are people!
That’s why I like this campaign so much. It dispels ingrained stereotypes and looks at bringing people closer together rather than creating these counterproductive human and cultural barriers such as us and them, rich and poor, lucky and to be pitied people.
Learn more about Mama Hope.
Caitriona's Digital Diary 