EDUCATING CELEBRITIES ON BEST PRACTICES<\/span><\/ul>\nRe: Jan 25th<\/sup> article, Why slam the good that celebrities achieve?<\/span><\/p>\nFirstly, allow me to acknowledge the wonderful work that Africa Canada Accountability Coalition (ACAC) is doing in bringing forth awareness of the Congolese situation to the fore of UBC campus.\u00a0 While it is certain that there is still much work to be done, their initiatives have been increasingly gaining recognition from the University community. <\/span><\/p>\nI would like to pose more questions than answers.\u00a0 And before I begin, a disclaimer: I am not an expert on the issue of development or foreign aid.<\/span><\/p>\nThe concept of celebrity-aid fundamentally calls into question, “is it ethically correct to use the influence that celebrities have to raise awareness to an issue, even if some of the values that are portrayed through the entertainment industry are not necessarily positive?”\u00a0 Specifically, I refer to the fact that much of the wealth legitimately lavished upon these talented individuals come from international policies that have directly or indirectly resulted in plight and poverty of the under-resourced countries.\u00a0 And ironically, now they\u2019re turning around and trying to \u201cfix the problem.\u201d But that\u2019s for another time; \u2018aid by celebrity\u2019 is occurring all around us and will not be fading away anytime soon, so let\u2019s take a critical lens at the acts themselves.<\/span><\/p>\nAssuming that the motivations of these celebrities in helping a country in need are not for selfish gains, I still believe that the issue of celebrity-based philanthropy falls into the gray zone of advocacy.\u00a0 It raises the question, “are celebrities adequately aware of the scope and complexities of the issues to make public appeals for a country or its people?”\u00a0 The majority of celebrities that have banded in solidarity for the cause of alleviating poverty or disaster relief, I contend, do not.\u00a0 They do not fully understand the geopolitical situations of the area that is affected, or how its socioeconomic structures and cultural norms would affect the delivery of aid in those regions.\u00a0 They are touched by the urgent disasters happening in the world, and perhaps believe, first and foremost, that the world ought to rally with them for what is happening in Haiti, Somalia or Ethiopia, and is for this reason that they resort to the portrayal of peoples in these regions as helpless individuals, to prompt us to act.\u00a0 They have done well; Canada for Haiti, for example, raised more than $27 million.\u00a0 But the collateral damage, as Bergen from ACAC has astutely mentioned, is reinforcement of the \u2018helpless victim\u2019 stereotype. <\/span><\/p>\nSo, how do we address this issue? No, good intentions are not enough, but equally, it is not enough for us to slam them for their good intentions and move on.\u00a0 What the celebrities (and advocates) need, I firmly believe, is meaningful, constructive and balanced dialogue, not only with researchers, but more importantly with the people that they hope to serve.\u00a0 Too often we are too caught up in thinking about how to \u201cfix\u201d underdevelopment, and ignore the simple power of authentic conversations with the people that we are speaking out for.\u00a0 After all, it is not a battle between celebrities and advocates; both parties would form a ridiculous circus if they do not realize that the real battle is fought by the everyday, ordinary people impoverished by war, famine or tyranny, and that they<\/em> are the experts from whom we ought to learn and consult.<\/span><\/p>\nYan Xu <\/span><\/p>\nUniversity of British Columbia student in the Faculty of Science, currently coordinating one of 27 approved student directed seminars, semester-long courses facilitated solely by students that have received teaching and academic training.\u00a0 This seminar, titled \u201cTopics in International Service-Learning,\u201d explores ethical, sustainability and intercultural concerns related to short-term service engagement by students in under-resourced countries, working with vulnerable populations.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\n
EDUCATING CELEBRITIES ON BEST PRACTICES<\/span><\/ul>\nRe: Jan 25th<\/sup> article, Why slam the good that celebrities achieve?<\/span><\/p>\nFirstly, allow me to acknowledge the wonderful work that Africa Canada Accountability Coalition (ACAC) is doing in bringing forth awareness of the Congolese situation to the fore of UBC campus.\u00a0 While it is certain that there is still much work to be done, their initiatives have been increasingly gaining recognition from the University community. <\/span><\/p>\nI would like to pose more questions than answers.\u00a0 And before I begin, a disclaimer: I am not an expert on the issue of development or foreign aid.<\/span><\/p>\nThe concept of celebrity-aid fundamentally calls into question, “is it ethically correct to use the influence that celebrities have to raise awareness to an issue, even if some of the values that are portrayed through the entertainment industry are not necessarily positive?”\u00a0 Specifically, I refer to the fact that much of the wealth legitimately lavished upon these talented individuals come from international policies that have directly or indirectly resulted in plight and poverty of the under-resourced countries.\u00a0 And ironically, now they\u2019re turning around and trying to \u201cfix the problem.\u201d But that\u2019s for another time; \u2018aid by celebrity\u2019 is occurring all around us and will not be fading away anytime soon, so let\u2019s take a critical lens at the acts themselves.<\/span><\/p>\nAssuming that the motivations of these celebrities in helping a country in need are not for selfish gains, I still believe that the issue of celebrity-based philanthropy falls into the gray zone of advocacy.\u00a0 It raises the question, “are celebrities adequately aware of the scope and complexities of the issues to make public appeals for a country or its people?”\u00a0 The majority of celebrities that have banded in solidarity for the cause of alleviating poverty or disaster relief, I contend, do not.\u00a0 They do not fully understand the geopolitical situations of the area that is affected, or how its socioeconomic structures and cultural norms would affect the delivery of aid in those regions.\u00a0 They are touched by the urgent disasters happening in the world, and perhaps believe, first and foremost, that the world ought to rally with them for what is happening in Haiti, Somalia or Ethiopia, and is for this reason that they resort to the portrayal of peoples in these regions as helpless individuals, to prompt us to act.\u00a0 They have done well; Canada for Haiti, for example, raised more than $27 million.\u00a0 But the collateral damage, as Bergen from ACAC has astutely mentioned, is reinforcement of the \u2018helpless victim\u2019 stereotype. <\/span><\/p>\nSo, how do we address this issue? No, good intentions are not enough, but equally, it is not enough for us to slam them for their good intentions and move on.\u00a0 What the celebrities (and advocates) need, I firmly believe, is meaningful, constructive and balanced dialogue, not only with researchers, but more importantly with the people that they hope to serve.\u00a0 Too often we are too caught up in thinking about how to \u201cfix\u201d underdevelopment, and ignore the simple power of authentic conversations with the people that we are speaking out for.\u00a0 After all, it is not a battle between celebrities and advocates; both parties would form a ridiculous circus if they do not realize that the real battle is fought by the everyday, ordinary people impoverished by war, famine or tyranny, and that they<\/em> are the experts from whom we ought to learn and consult.<\/span><\/p>\nYan Xu <\/span><\/p>\nUniversity of British Columbia student in the Faculty of Science, currently coordinating one of 27 approved student directed seminars, semester-long courses facilitated solely by students that have received teaching and academic training.\u00a0 This seminar, titled \u201cTopics in International Service-Learning,\u201d explores ethical, sustainability and intercultural concerns related to short-term service engagement by students in under-resourced countries, working with vulnerable populations.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Yan Xu The below is a letter in response to the article on celebrity voices mentioned in Monday’s post, sent to the editor of The Province: EDUCATING CELEBRITIES ON BEST PRACTICES Re: Jan 25th article, Why slam the good that celebrities achieve? Firstly, allow me to acknowledge the wonderful work that Africa Canada Accountability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":720,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4879,5916],"tags":[5017],"class_list":["post-1000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contributions","category-debatables","tag-teaching-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/720"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1676,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/ethicsofisl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}