I had an interesting conversation with someone from Yayasan Sejahtera yesterday. I met her to discuss the possibility of working together, to promote their cause. They "help the extreme poor create a better life for themselves by equipping them with the necessary tools, skills, infrastructure and opportunities to break out of the poverty cycle", a cause that I believe to be extremely important. I once wrote about how those who need help the most are the ones who don't know they need it, or are utterly helpless to do anything about it. If they are lucky, someone outside the cycle is able to intervene.
Aishah shared the difficulty of 'marketing' their cause: to the public, the sponsors and even the people they are trying to help. Just like a commercial product, it is extremely difficult to promote something so far from 'sexy', so time consuming to see results. Yes, even humanitarian causes can be sexy or not. Disaster relief, for example, is extremely titillating. Helping a Mak Cik to sustain her keropok business, to feed and school her children, is not.
Another difficulty is that the cause is asking us to face the undesirable truth. In Malaysia, where there are comforts and luxury in the urban cities, it is hard to believe that in certain corners of the country, there are still fellow citizens who have no access to clean water and live in shacks, much less have electricity. Indeed, telling the well-to-doers that such living conditions still exist in Malaysia usually evokes disbelief. It's not a pretty picture that it's trying to sell, hence, it's hard to get people to 'buy' into the truth, before we can even get around to rectifying it. A weight loss ad promises that we can lose 10 pounds in 10 sessions, and we believe it because we want to. A property ad promises great investment returns, and we believe it because we want to. These ads can achieve great impact with very little effort because they are selling highly desirable products. On the other hand, Yayasan Sejahtera will have to put in a mountain of effort to achieve a molehill of a result. Because poverty is something that makes us uncomfortable.
So, what do we do? We need to give poverty a makeover. It needs a good stylist. Feature a young, kampung girl, with fresh, natural beauty, tending to her vegetable farm, with butterflies flitting around her like an exotic Snow White. Capture images of handsome, muscular young men, casting the fishing net, while the setting sun reflects off his wet body like a golden Adonis. Show good looking children playing by the river, like a GAP ad.
You, reader, may roar rahr-rahr at my suggestion. But black cat, white cat...what does it matter as long as it catches the fish?
