Haitian workers clear rubble from a street following the January 12, 2010 quake that devastated Haiti. Photo courtesy UNDP.

When the earthquake struck in Haiti, it changed Dominique Anglade’s life in Montreal forever. Her parents, Georges and Mireille Anglade, were the first Canadians confirmed killed in the aftermath of Jan. 12, 2010. They were crushed to death in their family compound in the Mont-Joli neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince.

Anglade, a 39-year-old management consultant and mother of two, was lost in grief for several months. But her parents’ deaths and the scenes of devastation from Haiti also steeled her in unexpected ways. She used her management experience to come up with a new model for delivering aid to Haiti. The organization, dubbed Kanpe (Creole for “stand up”), was already in the planning stages when the quake struck. Kanpe seeks to cut through the maze of aid organizations operating in Haiti by providing rural families with a guide: A Haitian caseworker that helps them assess their needs and find sustainable solutions. Kanpe tries to help Haitians help themselves, with an end goal of financial autonomy.

“Despite the pain I was going through, I thought of all the people in Haiti who don’t have parents or children anymore. People lost everything. And I thought, I can’t sit here in Montreal and feel bad about myself when there is such devastation in Haiti. I am probably in a better position than most who have been touched by this,” said Anglade, who was born in Montreal, but lived in Haiti for several years as a teenager before returning to Canada for university.

Kanpe’s model targets families, assessing their needs and formulating co-ordinated solutions. Its board includes Paul Farmer, the U.S. doctor who founded Partners in Health and Régine Chassagne, the Montreal singer from Arcade Fire whose parents emigrated from Haiti during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Kanpe is trying to raise $2 million to help 500 families in Haiti’s central plateau. Anglade has traveled to Haiti twice since the earthquake, to bury her parents, and to further Kanpe’s work. “People say there is nothing happening in Haiti. There’s not enough, but there are things happening,” she says. “I refuse to be discouraged.”

The Plan Canada campaign encourages potential donors to invest in girls by arguing that females will naturally work to help others and inspire social cohesion. “Because I am a girl I will take what you invest in me and uplift everyone around me,” one poster states. The kicker of the campaign is “Are you the one?” Although the appeal for donations is intended to be universal one, it capitalizes on the notion that girls passively wait for their saviours.

The campaign is cut from the same pink material as the ubiquitous movement to find a cure for breast cancer. (Like the breast cancer campaign, Plan Canada also distributes its logo on pink T-shirts to increase awareness of Because I am a Girl.) For her book Pink Ribbons Inc., Queens University professor Samantha King investigated how the campaign expunged the “stigma, secrecy and shame” associated with the disease by recasting its victims as noble survivors. The Pink Ribbon movement blasts representations and symbols of “hyperfeminity” and casts sufferers as “wife,” “mother” and so on. In so doing, King explains, the campaign has reimagined a disease that challenges a woman’s ability to breastfeed, reproduce and hold together the nuclear family into one that celebrates this ability.  The Pink Ribbons marketing strategy teaches that women will valiantly uphold their social roles in spite of the disease, and that’s a trait that corporate sponsors enthusiastically applaud.

These pseudofeminist campaigns do not demand social and economic transformation. They simply ask for a little bit more, and even that request is one they feel the need to justify. They do so by appealing to old-fashioned ideas of what constitutes femininity and depicting females as deserving and grateful.

The appeals are safe, and their targets are too. The Pink Ribbons campaign seeks a pharmaceutical “cure”; it doesn’t, of course, investigate the relationship between pharmaceutical hormones, estrogen-mimicking plastics, industrial pollution and breast cancer incidence. The Plan Canada campaign refers to early marriage and the withdrawal of girls from school, but glosses over any questions about the effects of global capitalism and the market logic that displaces communities, devalues women’s labour and education, and forces families into the kind of poverty that necessitates early marriage.

The campaigns speak to the depoliticized nature of charity, but the way they sanitize and corporatize feminism is also insidious. Movements that truly fight for females don’t reinforce gender roles—they sabotage them. From the suffragettes who, 100 years ago, launched a window-smashing campaign in response to police brutality against female activists, to the radical feminists who are mobilizing against U.S. wars today, these movements are disruptive and uncompromising. Their slogan would be something more akin to this: Because I am a girl, I am tired of asking nicely.

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Haitians awaiting relif supplies in Port au Prince, January 15, 2010.

The earthquake that devastated Haiti on the afternoon of January 12, 2010, viscerally illustrated the need for responsible, long-term, sustainable development. For many thousands of Haitians, poverty must be considered the true cause of death. The cost to Haiti in human lives is beyond measure, but the quake also destroyed the rotted foundations of the Haitian government and threatened its already fragile civil society. As the full horror of the disaster began to trickle out and the death toll rose to an estimated 200,000, aid agencies, governments, and ordinary citizens collectively pledged millions of dollars to support relief efforts.

Canadians can take some small comfort in knowing that we responded far out of proportion to our size and population: in absolute dollar terms, Canada’s total pledge of US$131 million is second only to the United States, and we gave more per capita than any other country. Following that outpouring of compassion and hard cash, it seems cranky to complain that it’s not enough. But it’s not.

Haiti was a disaster area long before the quake hit. This was simply the catastrophic climax of a centuries-long story of colonial oppression, financial exploitation, political meddling, and humanitarian neglect. From France’s astonishing 150 million-franc charge for its slave colony’s independence, to the murderous homegrown government of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, to the 2004 coup—the 32nd coup in 200 years—that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti has suffered near-continuous calamity, much of it inflicted by outsiders—though there was plenty self-manufactured, too.

The world’s late-breaking compassion for the people of Haiti is still valuable. But the fact that it apparently takes the wholesale destruction of a country to grab any significant attention is a shame. It’s easy to open your heart and your wallet when the headlines are screaming. But the day-to-day truth is that Canada is nowhere close to meeting its long-standing target of contributing 0.7 percent of GDP to aid. We currently lag around halfway to that goal, which was first set by Prime Minister Lester Pearson in 1969, renewed by a unanimous parliamentary vote in 2005, and has never once been met.

It’s currently trendy to dismiss international aid as condescending and ineffective, a waste of effort that props up dictators or kills entrepreneurial spirit or both—an idea that free marketeers have diligently worked at circulating. But the real waste is spending money to pick up the pieces after a disaster, rather than investing for the long term in projects that strengthen infrastructure, stabilize governments, and improve living conditions, allowing societies to better withstand sudden shocks. Haiti needs our help more than ever now. But the rich nations ought to be haunted by the thousands whose lives would have been improved—perhaps even saved—if we had fulfilled our pledges years ago.

The "Proclaimer" solar-powered talking bible. For serious.

Haiti suffers its worst natural disaster in hundreds of years. An estimated 200,000 people are dead or missing. Aid agencies from around the globe rush to stem deadly post-quake effects like malnutrition and cholera. And U.S. evangelical group Knobs for Jesus Faith Comes by Hearing® in the U.S. sends what? A wind-up, solar-powered talking bible. Actually, 600 of them. Because what Haitians really need right now is a radio that only shouts bible verses in Creole.

The forehead-slapping story from News.com.au:

Called the “Proclaimer,” the audio Bible delivers “digital quality” and is designed for “poor and illiterate people”, the Faith Comes By Hearing group said.

According to their website, the Proclaimer is “self-powered and can play the Bible in the jungle, desert or … even on the moon!” […]

With tens of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents living outdoors because their homes have collapsed or they fear aftershocks from last week’s quake, the audio Bible can bring them “hope and comfort that comes from knowing God has not forgotten them through this tragedy”, the group said.

That is seriously F’d up. I’m sure they sent, like, cash or rice or something too, precisely to head off assholes like me saying  they should send something that’s going to actually be of some use.

Religious aid agencies are on the ground in Haiti, and many of them are doing amazing work. I donated to the Red Cross, and World Vision and other Jesus-y aid groups totally deserve our support. But a bunch of self-righteous proselytizers who see this quake as an opportunity to displace Haitian religious practices of Voodoo with crank-radios filled with The Word Of The Lord are just sleazy.

Does web-based charity really click? Illustration by Matt Daley.

Recently, I’ve been inundated with inspiring messages and touching stories of online charitable endeavours every time I sit at the computer. Whether the bike ride to cure cancer or the drive to raise money for kids in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s been incredible to see such widespread empathy and concern. So I, like so many others, have been taking a moment from my day to click “forward” and spread that message of hope.

Oh, wait. They wanted me to donate money? It seemed so much easier to just click.

While the internet has clearly opened new avenues for generating revenue and enthusiasm for helping others, at the same time, tech-savvy activists can suffer the same problems as their for-profit counterparts. There is an uneasy feeling that, despite some success stories, all that breathless energy is creating more excitement than actual change. What’s more, lost in the energetic shuffle of social media is the threat that the Net’s culture of instant gratification and narcissism might be spilling over into real-world charity.

Talk about online activism and for many Canadians, Facebook pops to mind first. There are, after all, almost 12 million of us using the service. And I’m pretty sure that you, like me, long ago got tired of the unending requests to join groups for various causes, from the inane to the important.

One hopeful request that crossed my path this year was a group formed to protest the closing of Pages, perhaps Toronto’s most important indie bookstore. The group quickly swelled to 2,300 members and the store’s landlord granted a reprieve. Six months later, Pages still couldn’t turn a profit and the store closed anyway. For all the passion, the one thing the group couldn’t do was make a landlord put independent books above the rent. Here was online activism running smack into the cold, hard wall of the real world.

It’s a phenomenon that is unfortunately all too common. It even has a name — “slacktivism” — that Evgeny Morozov, a leading thinker on the political impact of the web, bluntly defines as “feel-good online activism that has zero political or social impact.” Peruse the top causes on Facebook and you’ll quickly find examples of what he’s talking about, like a cause called “Stop Child Abuse” that has 1.9 million members and so far has raised—wait for it— $1,500.

I ran the problem past Jane Zhang, program director of Techsoup Canada, an organization that supplies Canadian nonprofits with donated software and technology. She pointed out that while social media may lag in raising money, it does excel at getting a message out. Zhang points to “HoHOTo,” a holiday party that was organised over Twitter by some of the Toronto technorati, and eventually raised $35,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank.

Rather than being spearheaded by the food bank itself, Daily Bread simply put out a message of need, and an affluent, privileged community responded. The event has inspired others: Vancouver’s game-developer community has adopted it as a model for their own “Ghoulash Bash” to support their local food bank. In combining both charity and fun, HoHOTo was able to overcome apathy in order to help people. As Zhang says, “People used to give out of pity, but now they give out of a sense of fulfillment.”

But the notion of fulfillment also implies a move away from selflessness, and toward a merger of pleasure and giving. Participating in web-based charity can still work, but it’s often charity seen through the lens of late capitalism: it’s about the individual, and it’s about feeling good while giving.

And, if I recall correctly, after four beers at HoHOTo, I did feel pretty great. But though it would be both naive and churlish to suggest charity must adhere to some ideal of ascetic selflessness, it seems worth questioning whether that fuzzy line between self-sacrifice and self-satisfaction has simply become dominated by the self.

In an age when oversharing reigns, part of the easy appeal of joining a Facebook group is that it immediately shows up on your profile. You don’t just feel good helping, you get to look good doing it too.

On the surface, it’s an understandable problem. In much of one’s online life, pressing buttons can quickly cause real, satisfying things to happen, whether buying a TV or arranging a party. But because that culture of immediacy and gratification has come to dominate commerce and social interaction, it doesn’t mean that it works for activism too. As Zhang warns, “What people forget is that technology is a tool, not a solution.” Right now, the power of the web to consolidate and galvanize people is being frittered away by a culture of narcissism. If the purpose of charity swings toward feeling good and away from doing good, we have a problem.

So many of us want to help and want to be a part of something. But in a time when everything, even charity, beckons us to both enjoy and express ourselves, it’s time to rethink the limits of online activism. Who knows? Maybe I’ll start a Facebook group to spread the word. I mean, it’ll only take a second.

Dr. Jane Philpott, founder of the Give a Day to World AIDS campaign. Photo by Molly Crealock.

One day’s salary might not mean much to most of us, but to Dr. Jane Philpott, founder of the Give a Day to World AIDS campaign, it might be just enough to save a life.

In 2004, the Markham, Ont.-based family physician gave a presentation to her colleagues about the AIDS epidemic. Knowing that she couldn’t just talk about the plight of AIDS in Africa without giving the doctors some advice on how they could help, she suggested that those in attendance donate one day’s income to the Stephen Lewis Foundation — a Canadian organization fighting AIDS in Africa at the ground level — in honour of December 1, the annual World AIDS Day. This simple idea led to 50 doctors donating their daily salaries, an act that raised $33,000.

Since then, the 47 year-old mother of four has seen her initiative grow to include 12 hospitals, 15 law firms and dozens of other businesses, church groups and individuals, resulting in $700,000 in donations last year. This year, she’s aiming to raise $1 million for the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Those funds will go towards providing drugs for Africans infected with HIV/AIDS, treatment that most people in Ethiopia and Niger could never afford. Residents of these countries make on average US$180 and US$260 per person per year respectively, while anti-retroviral drugs, the preferred treatment for HIV/AIDS, cost at least $2,738 US per person per year — a figure that just one day’s pay from a few Canadian professionals can easily cover.

Philpott witnessed the initial outbreak of AIDS in Africa while working there in the ‘80s. She first lived in Kenya and then after a brief return to Canada to start a family, in Niger, where she worked closely with local families whose lives were affected by HIV/AIDS and other tropical diseases.

What bonded her to those families, however, was losing her three-year-old daughter to a blood infection. While reflecting on that tragedy, Philpott points out she was in a country where 25 to 30 percent of children die before their fifth birthday. “It gave me more of a passion to say this is unjust, that the kind of healthcare expectations that those women have for their children are not the same as what mothers here expect,” she says. “I don’t think you can go back to practicing medicine in Canada and ignore those realitiesÑat least I couldn’t.”

It’s that passion for global health equality that drives Philpott and the Give a Day campaign. Although they don’t formally lobby the government to increase foreign aid, Philpott says the Give a Day campaign is a means of mobilization and a voice for the people. “How do we make ourselves heard? Money talks. How we use our money speaks volumes about what matters most to us.” She feels the Canadian government needs to rethink its foreign aid priorities when it comes to the AIDS epidemic. “We’ve set an easily attainable target of 0.7 percent of GDP as a goal and we’re not even halfway there.”

Despite claims from the Harper government that it would increase foreign aid for Africa, a UNAIDS report released in July 2008 shows Canada’s contributions in 2007 to AIDS relief was $103.7 million, whereas the Netherlands gave $380.5 million and the United Kingdom donated $984.9 million. In addition, the Canada Fund for Africa, created in 2005 by the Canadian International Development Agency, was no longer operational as of March 31, 2008.

Still, Dr. Philpott isn’t giving up. “I feel a huge challenge in terms of the urgency,” she says, “but we could beat this thing. We could really be a big part of seeing the end of AIDS in the world.”