After tweeting and writing the below post, we got a Twitter response from @tatewatkins, who wrote the article, letting us know "I wrote the piece, do understand how TOMS operates, and sought comment from them multiple times." It seems he did his due diligence. The negative sense I got from Oliberté was also clarified in a tweet they sent saying, "Just want to take a moment to say we're not "anti"
I think the title of the article and certain quotes made about TOMS made it seem more negative towards TOMS than intended.
I also removed my statement below about the article being "biased and poorly researched". I think I was overreacting and wasn't fair to the author.
GOOD's comment section doesn't allow me more than 1000 characters and what I had to say in response to an article that seemed to present a negative view of TOMS from the people who were interviewed wouldn't fit in the space they gave me. So, here's my brief response which I would love to talk about more with anyone who is interested.
I appreciate the effort to make a comparison between these two companies, but I think you are really oversimplifying the issue of poverty and making one company look like it is so much better than the other, when they are really just trying to help people in different ways. Both ways can be good if done well. Either can make mistakes and end up being detrimental to community development. Neither will bring all the help that is necessary to someone living in poverty.
TOMS is providing shoes to children who otherwise would not have the ability to get shoes, because they don't have the money. Oliberte is providing jobs to those who would probably not make as much if they were doing something else. Both can be good for any given community in Africa, or on any other continent for that matter. Both are marketing that their products will help people beyond the consumer.
The quote that "TOMS is a good marketing tool, but not good aid" is misleading. It assumes that giving people jobs is always better. Are we advocating child labor here? What about the hundreds of millions of orphans, the majority of whom are in Africa? Giving an adult a factory job in no way guarantees that those kids are going to get what they need. The jobs are good for the community, but they are only a small part. And generosity is very powerful.
Saundra Schimmelpfennig also doesn't seem to understand the value of a gift given in love. That can often have a far greater impact on someone than a job, but in a different way. You can't begin to say that one has more impact than the other, without showing some good research demonstrating that providing a job to an adult (who may or may not "do good" with their money) is better than providing shoes to children in poverty.
I think both companies are doing some good things and they will both have opportunities to make improvements and make better decisions as they continue to grow.
I think it is also important to note how often gifts are given out of pride,pity, or self aggrandizement. There is a place for gifts given out of love, and my religious convictions place great emphasis on love and compassion. However in my experience the human dignity (the God given dignity) of the intended beneficiary is too often neglected to serve up warm fuzzies. Giving gifts even if they are "in love" is not a sustainable strategy for alleviating poverty, especially when these gifts create dependency and prevent local, long -term development. Especially when this poverty is something that I am part of due to the economic and institutional structures of the world today.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping in to comment!
DeleteI agree with you that gifts, including gifts of aid (food, medical supplies, clean water, clothing, etc.), can and have been given for all of the negative reasons you mention. My point is that there is a time and place for both gifts AND sustainable projects. Either a gift, or an opportunity which helps someone to learn a skill that will allow them to provided for themselves and their families can both be good things if given at the proper time. This requires discernment and true transparency in the relationship between the one giving assistance and the one receiving assistance.
It is so important to know the people you want to serve. You can't just quickly decide on solutions based on your own culture or perceptions of poverty. I'm not sure how often people neglect or ignore another persons "dignity" in favor of making themselves feel better about their own giving, though I know that does happen a lot. I just don't think that kind of on argument can be used to say that one way of helping is always better than the other, especially because I also have example of so-called sustainable projects that have caused lots of harm as well.
My experience has been as a part of an organization and a team of people who observed suffering caused by poverty, which moved us to develop close relationships with the poor and those serving the poor in their communities. Through those kinds of partnerships, we were able to learn about the different causes of poverty and respond directly to people with programs and gifts that fulfilled true needs.
I also believe that providing compassionately for someone is the beginning of a process. Anyone who only continues to give to someone else without any thought for development will only create dependency. I am not advocating that kind of giving. I have a lot of friends in Africa, Asia, and Latin America whom I consider to be friends and family. We worked together to determine how we could best serve their neighbors and transform communities through combined efforts of food distribution, water filtration projects, agricultural projects, education, medical supplies and equipment, spiritual care, and anything else that was needed.
The best book I've seen on the issue which takes into account the need to reject dependency while focusing on biblical compassion and justice at the same time is "When Helping Hurts" by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. They advocate focusing on how to best help by identifying the three stages of aid - relief, rehabilitation and development. Each stage requires a different kind of assistance and each stage is important and necessary. I really recommend reading it. Another good book is Walking with the Poor by Bryant Myers. His ideas contributed greatly to the first book mentioned.
I should write some posts about how economic and institutional structures contribute to poverty. That issue is far to big to respond to here. Being a part of something doesn't necessarily make you a cause, but it should cause us to ask what we may do in response to the knowledge that we are all parts of bigger systems that started moving long before we ever entered them.
Again, thanks for continuing the conversation with me.