Dadamac, International Development, information, misinformation and reality checks. October 5, 2010
Bala - Good to hear from you. Please do pick my brain at any time. I have certainly picked yours in the past when I have been at Fantsuam and you have listened so patiently to my confusions and given me wise insights. You ask a very interesting question - and as I started writing the reply I realised that I could use your question as an excuse to tell other people more about what Dadamac does do (and does not do) so I have decided to publish my reply as an open letter on posterous.
Your big question:
You asked "Aside from the website and other online publications, how does DadaMac raise public awareness in the UK about International development to stimulate the public over there to encourage others to help. Do you do any talks, write articles in local papers, that sort of thing?"
I will do my best to answer you. It is a long and complicated question , so I will unpick some bits of it first and try to answer the bits.
How does DadaMac raise public awareness in the UK about International development?
I think before I try to answer this further I will direct you to something I posted on posterous about Cicely and her reservations about "development" interventions from places like UK and USA - September 27, 2010 - Reflections on "Development" - by a volunteer returning from Fantsuam
Sources of information
There is a continual bombardment on TV, radio and through "junk mail" coming through our letter boxes. It seems that there is always some terrible disaster that requires help, and so there are news programmes about the disasters, and the government responds is some way (giving money that has been collected through our taxes), and then people are also encouraged to give additionally by donating to Oxfam, Red Cross, to special collections at church etc. and to people shaking collecting tins in busy public areas.
Then of course there is similar fundraising for ongoing poverty-relief/"development". All the charities step up their fundraising in the lead up to Christmas - so now that summer is over and the evenings are getting darker we can expect an ever increasing visibility of projects collecting for "clean water" programmes, "buy a poor family a cow/pig/goat/chicken/farm-implements" programmes, "sponsor a child through school" programmes (as well as local programmes to support the lifeboat society, guide-dogs for the blind, help-the-aged, cancer-research etc).
Also, since the credit crunch and our new coalition government, there are lots of cuts in government spending - education, defense, police, etc - but the government has said it will not cut the budget of DFID - the Department For International Development. I think this decision may cause more people to ask exactly what DFID does and how effectively it spends its money - so that may also raise public awareness.
In addition we have two other extreme views of Africa. News programmes show violence and corruption - political unrest, inter-tribal violence, civil wars, violence related to elections and election fraud and so on. By contrast we also have wonderful natural history programmes and travel programmes showing the unspoiled beauty of Africa and its wonderful wild life.
Mis-information rather than lack of information
The problem as I see it is mis-information and a distorted emphasis rather than lack of information. There is often an over-simplistic emphasis on starvation, corruption, conflict, and nature reserves. I know that when I first came to Nigeria to go to Ago-Are for Peter's funeral it was a most odd sensation of "the very familiar" (from pictures I had seen on TV etc) and the "totally unexpected" (where things weren't going according to my cultural assumptions and I had to keep re-thinking "how things worked and how people behaved"). It is why I call my working-holidays in Nigeria "reality checks".
Dadamac provides a communication channel - a reality check on International Development generalisations
Given the huge amount of information available Dadamac doesn't see itself as having a role in "raising public awareness about development" - rather it sees itself as a way of providing reality checks for the information that is already around. I want other people to lose their wrong assumptions - just as I have been able to do - but without needed to travel to Nigeria to do so.
Dadamac is building communication channels between UK and Africa. This is so that the Dadamac team in UK and Nigeria can work together to correct the mis-information that is out there. I believe that better information should lead to better investment and development. It is information directly from you and John and all the people at Fantsuam that will help people to understand how things really are. See September 27, 2010 - Dadamac - the Internet-enabled alternative to top-down development and September 9, 2010 - "Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid" and Dadamac
Credibility
It is not easy for me to correct people's mis-information because I do not yet have a personal reputation in the UK as someone who knows about rural realities. It is much better if I can say - please let me help you to check if that is true - please let us ask the people at Fantsuam.
My credibility is different if I am talking to a Nigerian in the UK - because with a Nigerian we both know what is true and we see "UK development programmes" from similar perspectives. When I meet a Nigerian we are soon sharing stories about things we miss from Nigeria, but also problems with NEPA and other aspects of "the Nigerian factor", and how hard it is to get people in UK to really understand how things are. In fact - I am encouraged and honoured by how often a Nigerian in UK will laugh and say to me "Pam - You are a Nigerian!"
It is not easy for me to speak to UK people with any authority - I can only "be" what people can easily "see" that I am - and what is there for people to see? I do not have a label that says "DFID" or "Oxfam" or "VSO" - If I go to a meeting I look like someone from a little UK charity raising funds for a single school or orphanage or suchlike. Until the name of Dadamac is as well known it is hard for people to understand what I am offering to them when we first meet face to face (it is different with people who have got to know me on the Internet over the past ten years).
This problem of credibility is why I have been spending time collecting up evidence on the Internet that Dadamac is the place to come for a reality check. Through Dadamac there is an effective information channel to John and his team (both here in the UK and in Nigeria). All of us in the team have different specialist knowledge and together we can call out about a whole range of development realities - and of course, besides the specialist knowledge that you bring, it is your work with Zittnet that makes the UK- Nigeria communication channel technically possible.
Ref "encouraging others to help. Do you do any talks, write articles in local papers, that sort of thing?"
Hmm - perhaps I have already given some clues as to what my answer might be to that question
The quick answer is I've done a bit locally ref "talks, write articles in local papers, that sort of thing?" but not recently. I feel I can do more by going to public meetings relating to "development" and ICT4D etc, by joining in online debates, and by working on our web-presence. We need to find other volunteers to help make "that sort of thing" happen. You may have come across Nikki and I talking about "that sort of thing" with regard to finding "Dadamac ambassadors" and preparing the "Ambassodor information packs". I hope our website presence and our increasing collection of good information about projects should help us to find more people to help with these roles.
Is that any help? Let me know what else you are wondering and I will do my best to answer.
Pamela
Pamela McLean http://www.dadamac.net/about/pam
Email pamela.mclean@dadamac.net
Twitter @Pamela_McLean and #dadamac
Website http://www.dadamac.net
Dadamac - "We introduce people to each other (mostly UK-Nigeria) and help them do useful stuff."