New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof developed the “Win-a-Trip” contest. Winners accompany Kristof on a trip to Africa and report on their experiences. Kristof’s hope was that a college student reporting back to their peers via blog entries and YouTube would raise the next generation’s interest in global issues as well as providing a fresh perspective on issues such as poverty, and hardship facing many African nations.
Kristof reaches out to college students to find a third contestant in the following video. http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/01/17/opinion/1231545372460/win-a-trip-with-nicholas-kristof-2009.html?scp=5&sq=kristof&st=cse
Paul Bowers, a sophomore at University of South Carolina became the third winner and was promised a trip to Guinea Bissau, Guinea and Liberia, and possibly also to Sierra Leone. The actual itinerary would depend on what roads were passable when they arrived in the rainy May season.
The two headed out on their trip and Bower’s blog entries started to appear on Kristof’s NY Times blog “On the Ground” (You can read blog entries from Kristof, Bowers and the other contest winners at http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com) Bower’s blog entries reflect his fresh perspective on the hunger and malnutrition he witnessed. In his May 22, 2009 entry he speculates on why people are trapped in cycles of poverty. He draws on of Paul Collier’s 2007 book “The Bottom Billion” who says “the people who seek to help them are often misguided, working from either false assumptions or bad data. From aid groups to governments to average citizens, they have compassion and all the right intentions, but they lack an accurate understanding of the real issues at hand.” Bower puts himself in that category recognizing that he lacks a bigger picture understanding of the economics, politics and epidemiology relevant to the issues at hand is humbled by people who have been able to wrap their brain around such complex issues and try to make a meaningful impact on them.
In order to gain a big picture perspective on such complex global issues, we can look to the goals of comparative policy as discussed in class and Jreisat’s book. By looking at complex issues in this context, we gain a better understanding which can be used to come up with better solutions.
By gaining a better understanding of the problem and the cultural and political factors can help turn good intentions into meaningful action. Bower notes that small changes were the most effective. “Africa doesn’t need headless hearts, but it doesn’t need heartless heads, either. The people who gave me the most hope on this trip were the ones who combined real expertise with genuine compassion. From civically minded flour mill operators to obstetricians who provided services free of charge, their fields were diverse but their mindsets were similar.”
Let’s hope that Kristof’s contest inspires a new generation of students who use a comparative approach and a fresh perspective to make a difference on long-standing, complex global issues.
Jen S
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It seems that Africa has eclipsed western Europe as a coming of age ritual for those college students born in the 80s and 90s. I think about Barbara Kingsolver's book, The Poisonwood Bible, and what was done to the Lumumba regime, then move on to Laurens Van Der Post. Suffice it to say that western perceptions of the second largest continent are shaky, at best.
ReplyDeleteThe path to hell is paved with good intentions.
Maryann McKenzie