Ending Humanitarian Douchery

In my last entry I wrote about a humorous video very effectively delivering information about Australian Aid. That was a broadcast television production, but humour in video can also be very powerful when produced directly for aid campaigns. It has the power to cut through people’s filters in a unique way. And when done well, funny and informative videos can go viral very quickly. People love to share things that will give their friends a laugh as well as making a good point. Which brings me to the campaign to End Humanitarian Douchery.

This campaign was launched earlier this year by two Canadian university students, Christina Guan and Kaelan MacNeill, and has attracted a good deal of global media attention. It aims to raise awareness of the irresponsible side of the $2 billion voluntourism industry, which the campaign suggests can turn aid and social change into a commodity if voluntourists do not properly do their research before embarking on their travels, where “volunteers treat their trip like any other act of consumption and trample into host communities with a mindset of vacationing and tourism, pursuing photo opps and messy nights out instead of a true learning experience.”

Here the campaign has used video to cleverly turn the issue on its head, with If Voluntourists Talked About North America:

The aim of this campaign is “not to shame volunteers into hating themselves but to empower them to pursue their passion in a responsible way.” With around 38,000 YouTube hits the video has been extremely successful in helping to drive that message. It’s a very funny and a very capable production, yet the pair produced the video themselves with zero budget. They used a friend to perform and filmed in half a day, editing it themselves on Adobe Premiere the same evening.

Interestingly, the video explains very little of the campaign’s specifics, instead using humour to hook us in and highlight the nature of the attitudinal problems the campaign addresses. It then refers us to the website to learn about the issues and solutions in depth. It’s great example of a clever low-budget video effectively driving a development campaign forward.