#kony2012

[worth]

OK, nevermind, 2 people have posted it on facebook now.

And yeah, most of you guys aren't ######ed.

[Knut]

I have about 20 Kony 2012 posts on my facebook wall. Most of them are saying ... "What will you do" or "Amazing the effect social media has on changing the world" Haha..

Also funny that many of the people constantly posting Anti- War Rhetoric are advocating for this.

[Thor]

Yeah, its sad really, people are such sheeple, or more accurately just to lazy to think more about it other than a video and sharing it on facebook.

I saw my first friend who changed their avatar to Kony2012, he wasn´t thrilled with my posts with links from this thread to stories that didn't paint a rosy simple picture of the problem.

[Thor]

I just hope we free Nelson Mandela soon

[AR_Six]

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in kony 2012 have great intentions, nor do i doubt for a second that joseph kony is a very evil man. But despite this, i’m strongly opposed to the kony 2012 campaign.

Kony 2012 is the product of a group called invisible children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (kony 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on joseph kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and i’m not alone.

Invisible children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and charity navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of invisible children posing with weapons and personnel of the sudan people’s liberation army. Both the ugandan army and sudan people’s liberation army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but invisible children defends them, arguing that the ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although kony is no longer active in uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. these books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the updf, the military group invisible children is defending.

Still, the bulk of invisible children’s spending isn’t on supporting african militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that foreign affairs has claimed that invisible children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of lra abductions and murders and emphasizing the lra’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” he’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.
As chris blattman, a political scientist at yale, writes on the topic of ic’s programming, “there’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of africa. […] it hints uncomfortably of the white man’s burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the us has been involved in stopping him for years. U.s. Africa command (africom) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet invisible children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But invisible children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting kony 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support invisible children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, i have no issue with that. But i don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to invisible children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do i have a better answer? No, i don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support kony 2012 just because it’s something. something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your member of parliament or your senator or the president or the prime minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about joseph kony’s crimes on facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about joseph kony, not kony 2012.

~ grant oyston, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com

grant oyston is a sociology and political science student at acadia university in nova scotia, canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about kony 2012.

...

[speede5]

Like it or don't social media is the way this stuff is going to get mass coverage these days, I don't know why it's such a bad thing. Awareness is great, and if you don't care for it, move on, but at least theres a chance it will have a positive effect. It's just people trying to do the best they can for a cause.

[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by speede5

Like it or don't social media is the way this stuff is going to get mass coverage these days, I don't know why it's such a bad thing. Awareness is great, and if you don't care for it, move on, but at least theres a chance it will have a positive effect. It's just people trying to do the best they can for a cause.

Well, no, because to the extent people vote with their wallet by donating to an organization which is massively inefficient in applying those funds to actually accomplishing the difference-making the donator hopes to achieve, it's a relatively negative effect. The donator would be better off donating to Muscular Dystrophy Canada or Doctors Without Borders or one of many competently and ethically run organizations. Given where the money goes when you're supporting these invisible children people it's not great at all.

[You Need a Thneed]

Only 32% to direct services - by itself that number should bring up red flags.

[Flabbibulin]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

Only 32% to direct services - by itself that number should bring up red flags.

yuh, take the millions they are raising, hire a dozen American mercenary thugs, and shoot this guy in the face.

/Kony 2012 campaign

[M*A*S*H 4077]

Originally Posted by krazycanuck

Here's an interesting counter-view on the organization behind this.

http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/

Heck, almost 3% of the expenses of the organization are going towards salary of 3 employees. That seems hefty.

This whole thing screams "I just get got my arts degree, time to go make a difference in Africa" to me.

Came in here to post this link, glad to see that it had already made its way in.

Kony is an evil man and should be dealt with but I don't think I want to get behind their organization

[Zevo]

Yup, people sitting in their air-conditioned offices posting stuff about Kony on other peoples 'facebook wall'.

What a difference maker.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by speede5

Like it or don't social media is the way this stuff is going to get mass coverage these days, I don't know why it's such a bad thing. Awareness is great, and if you don't care for it, move on, but at least theres a chance it will have a positive effect. It's just people trying to do the best they can for a cause.

The issue is that awareness in & of itself is not enough. And there is such thing as too much awareness.

Let's say you've got a large crowd of people at a sporting event/concert. At some point a man starts having a heart attack, naturally the people around him come to his aid. But being that they arean't doctors they start shouting "This man is having a heart attack! We need a doctor!"

Everyone within ear shot hears this and naturally want to help as well, so they start shouting "Heart attack! We need a doctor!". The word of this man in need of a doctor keeps spreading to the point that the entire stadium is shouting "We need a doctor! We Need a doctor!"

Finally the ambulance arrives on the scene... to find 20,000+ people screaming "we need a doctor!" the medics ask "where? Who needs the doctor? What for?" but the people they encounter have no idea, so they just repeat "We need a doctor!"

Meanwhile, the heart attack victim is still in need of care, and there's a lot of awareness that he needs care, but any specifics of the situation "who needs a doctor? Where are they? What is their emergency?" is lost in the static of everyone shouting "We need a doctor!"

[Flames89]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Invisible children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal, and charity navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they haven’t had their finances externally audited. But it goes way deeper than that.

They are actually rated 3/4 stars. And 4/4 on financial metrics, but 2/4 on accountability because they don't have independant board voting members and a flag on the audited financials, which ARE audited by the firm Considine & Considine (flag likely because this firm is not a major).

Last year they raised $13.7 MM and spent $8.9 MM of which 80.5% was directed to program expenses, 16% in administration, and the remainder on fundraising expenses. The remaining assets are held on the books.

The program expenses include, yes, money spent raising awareness. And yes, only 31% of expenses went to "direct services", while last year it was 41%. But this charity is not about just donating money to those in need. Additionally there are program related "compensation costs" (12% of spending), which are seperate from general and management compensation costs. These are likely for hiring locals for the "mobile response teams". Look at their people page, there are a good number of locals, who need salaries.
As this charity pays themselves a salary, like Greenpeace, they are not the most efficient allocator of capital. But nor are they looking to be. Their 5th (of 5) mandated plans states their goal is to promote the arrest of Joseph Kony and top LRA leadership.

You may not agree with the method, the message, or the action; however, I hardly think they deserve the negative backlash based on out of date data. The executives take salaries of ~$85,000/yr.

dyodd
(I am not a supporter. Just learned of this today)

http://www.charitynavigator.org/inde...ry&orgid=12429
http://www.invisiblechildren.com/financials
http://www.invisiblechildren.com/protectionplan

[Flabbibulin]

^^^ Very good post. It is always interesting when people put up a fuss about executives for large charity organizations taking home good salaries... like hiring unqualified clergyman and paying them $40,000 a year to manage an organization that handles millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) is a good idea.

Obviously execs for these companies shouldn't be compensated ridiculous amounts, but I have no problem with their pay being industry standard (relative to the amount of capital and resources they are expected to manage). You have to pay good to get good.

[Savvy27]

What a bunch of cool cynics you all are.

[AR_Six]

The salaries are not so much the issue - the problem is organizational efficacy in terms of where the money is going generally (31% is really not good), but also the overriding message of the thing, which appears to be the support of the Ugandan government (instant red flag) in pursuing military options against this guy, as well as American military intervention for that purpose. Not that they necessarily HAVE any such options, given that he is reportedly no longer in Uganda, and notwithstanding the point that (as one article put it) it's probably not a good idea to airdrop US troops armed to the teeth "into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another."

Really though I think the main reason this isn't sitting right with me is that there's something insidious about the delivery system. The social media being used for this is good at drumming up a bunch of views, such that 8 million people who didn't know who Joseph Kony was yesterday will today. But the extent to which those people are informed and engaged is minimal. It's fast food idealism - you buy the whole happy meal; issue, perspective and proposed solution all as one and all more or less instantaneously. Social media is very much about the social - the issue is not so important as membership in a movement, which has the usual drawbacks of mob mentality.

[Ben_in_Canada]

This all reminds me of when the US tried to help out some goat herders in Afghanistan in the 80's.
I forgot how that worked out.

[Jake]

What's worse?

1) Sitting in office critiquing the campaign, even though you too just heard about this yesterday, while doing nothing about the problem.

2) Sitting in office, succumbing to the popular "fad" and forwarding the video/event on Facebook, even though you just heard about this yesterday, while doing nothing else except donating $5.

Option 1 accomplishes nothing. Option 2 can accomplish a lot if a large number of people get involved.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

Ah yes... the old "Tweet it or make a Facebook status update about it so we can feel better about ourselves" campaign. Where no one actually does anything.

Ah yes, the old "Sneer at people who tweet or make a facebook update so we can feel cynically superior" response. Always valuable.

I don't know how many people actually watched the 30 minute video, but it has 10 million views since Monday, and getting people to watch something that long ain't easy and it ain't free. It's also making international news.

Going by the "they only spent 32% of their 8 million dollar budget on direct services... bla bla bla", that means they only spent ~5.2 million on this "campaign", which is an unbelievable success that Coca Cola, BMW and the Avengers movie wouldn't even dream of.

I thought the video was pretty straightforward in saying "we are about raising awareness". They didn't make any claims about feeding people, digging wells or anything else.

They literally couldn't have done this better, and this kind of exposure for that kind of money is the bargain of the century. How telling the world about a war criminal that none of us had ever heard of yesterday morning is a bad thing, I don't know.

[Scorponok]

Food for thought?