Category: relief and development

T-Shirts Redux

In an earlier post I talked about sports leagues giving  losing-team t-shirts to the poor in Africa and other places around the world through World Vision. Turns out there was a long online debate about whether these kinds of “gifts in kind” help or hurt the recipients. One article that seems to give a pretty straightforward overview of the situation is “What Happens to All Those Super Bowl T-Shirts?: A Guest Post by Dean Karlan” (Freakonomics, February 15, 2011). Karlan is co-author of More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty.

I say this article seems to give a pretty straightforward overview because the issue is complicated,  and while I think I understand the problem (the biggest negative is the possible impact on the local textile economy) , I don’t know nearly enough to take sides or figure out a solution. Actually, what led me to this discussion was the serendipity of the Internet: I was searching for repat to see if it’s a legitimate abbreviation for repatriate, like expat for expatriate. (Answer: Not sure, but it should be.) That led me to the ProjectRepat site. ProjectRepat raises money for nonprofits by buying back used American T-shirts in Africa and then reselling them in the US. They explain that most of the shirts donated to non-profits in the US are baled up and sold for “pennies on the pound” and shipped to places like Africa to be resold in local markets. (I remember that as a college student I volunteered at the local Salvation Army, helping bundle up similar bales of clothing.) ProjectRepat then buys some of them back, adds their own screen-printed label, and resells them to US customers for $25 apiece. It’s an ironic and hip way to raise funds and draw attention to the situation. They also sell bags, scarves, and other items made by Kenyans from upcycled T-shirts. It was when I clicked on some of the news articles about their work that I found one at UN Dispatch: “Fighting Bad Aid by Selling Second-Hand T-Shirts Back to Americans” (May 17, 2011), in which Penelope Chester writes about the World Vision controversy and then draws attention to ProjectRepat. It’s interesting to note that on ProjectRepat’s FAQ page, they address the question of whether used T-shirts in Africa are destroying local markets:

This is an interesting question, and one that we will continue to explore as we grow as a company. We’ve heard a lot of different arguments. On the one hand, an abundance of inexpensive secondhand clothing does prevent local entrepreneurs and textile companies from starting their own businesses. On the other, it has created millions of small businesses (from clothing vendors, to seamstresses, to those packaging the clothing), and provides inexpensive clothing for those who otherwise might not be able to afford it at full price.

[the photo was taken in San, Mali: “San Market” by Janet Goldner, used under a Creative Commons license]

Of Mobile Phones and Commodes

One of the biggest changes in technology over the last few years has been the global explosion of cell phones. In many communities, lagging behind the developed world in land-line phone infrastructure, the people have completely skipped that step and have jumped directly to cell phone use. Two years ago, Keith Williams and Leith Gray wrote an article highlighting the potential of using mobile phones in cross-cultural Christian evangelism. Though the numbers have changed some since 2010, here are a few interesting points they collected for their article:

• There are more than 5 billion cell phone subscriptions in the world.

• Today’s smart phone is thousands of times more powerful than the computers that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon.

• The CEO of Google predicts that smart phone sales will surpass those of PCs by 2013, and by the same year, cell-phone data traffic will increase 66 times.

• Leading up to 2009, cell-phone use by Africans grew 550% in 5 years.

• In India, 20 million people each month get new cell-phone lines, in fact, “the people of India now have better access to mobile phones than to toilets.”

(Williams and Gray, “The Little Phone That Could: Mobile-Empowered Ministry,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology, Fall 2010)

I found these statistics to back up that last statement: A recent survey in India shows that while 53.2% of the people have cell phones, only 46.9% have toilets inside their homes. This means that the majority of the population must use public latrines (3.2%) or simply relieve themselves outside (49.8%).

(P. Sunderarajan, “Half of India’s Homes Have Cellphones, but Not Toilets,” The Hindu, March 14, 2012)

India is not the only country with this problem, and it’s a serious problem. According to Toilet Twinning,

2.6 billion people—that’s 40% of the world’s population—don’t have somewhere safe, clean and hygienic to go to the loo. The human impact of this scandalous stat is enormous: nearly one in five child deaths each year is due to diarrhea.

What is Toilet Twinning? It’s a partnership between UK-based charities Cord and Tearfund that allows donors to “twin” a toilet in their own home by paying for a new one to be built in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Cambodia. The cost for each one is £60 (about  US$100) and payments can be made from outside the UK using PayPal. Donors receive a framed certificate showing the new latrine, along with its GPS coordinates.

And just to bring this post full circle . . . Toilet Twinning reports that 1/4 of the people in Great Britain are serious multi-taskers, using their cell phones—for talking, texting, emailing, Facebooking, or Tweeting—while sitting on the commode.

(“Lifting the Lid on Britain’s Toilet Habits,” Toilet Twinning, November 19, 2010)

[photo: “toilet-phone,” by jan zeschky, used under a Creative Commons license]

Joplin, Missouri, USA, World

It’s been ten months since an EF5 tornado hit Joplin, MO, where we live. (We moved back here in June.) The city is still recovering, but even though there’s still a long way to go, a lot of progress has been made, in large part because of the thousands of volunteers who have given time to help. It’s spring break now, and workers are coming in from all over the country. Since May 22, help has come from outside the US, as well: For instance, after the Joplin school district announced its plans to provide Joplin high schoolers with MacBooks, the United Arab Emirates decided to donate $500,000 to help pay for them—with an additional pledge of another half-million dollars in the form of matching funds for the laptop program.

(Kelsey Ryan, “United Arab Emirates Donates $500,000 for High School Laptops,” The Joplin Globe, August 9, 2011)

And then there’s Toshiya Muto, who came to Joplin from Japan, to help in the cleanup. Muto wanted to pay back the US for what Americans did for his country after the tsunami. While in Joplin, Muto rode his bike 10 miles round trip everyday from his hotel to the disaster zone. “Of course it has an impact on my life,” said Muto, “but though my strength may be soft, slightly weak, if it has some impact, if someone needs me to exert myself, I’d like to do my best to help.”

 (Ethan Forhetz, “Joplin Tornado Victims Get Help from Japan,” WCTV, June 28, 2011)

[photo by BabyBare11, used under a Creative Commons license]

Texas Rangers, 2011 World Champs

Somebody somewhere may already be wearing a T-shirt or cap proclaiming the Rangers winners of last year’s World Series. That’s because before every  major sporting championship, vendors order boxfuls of apparel proclaiming both teams the winner, so they’ll be ready to sell the right ones immediately after the outcome is final. But what happens to the “wrong” ones? Vendors can return them in unopened boxes to the leagues that licensed their printing, and then they’re donated to humanitarian groups, which deliver them around the world. These groups include the Christian relief and development organization World Vision, which handed out over $2 million worth of clothing from the Chicago Bears’ loss in Superbowl XLI. Speaking about their ongoing distribution of this kind of sports gear, Dean Owen, a World Vision executive, said, “The clothing has been distributed in about 20 countries, all over Africa, to Asian nations, to Latin America and Europe. It goes to places of the greatest need, definitely not to Sweden, but definitely to Zimbabwe.”

(Steve Henson, “Both World Series Teams Have Championship Gear. What Happens to the Losers’ Stuff?” ThePostGame, Oct. 28, 2011)

Even if you don’t have any sports gear to donate, find out how you can meet needs around the world through World Vision here.

[photo: “Texas Rangers” by Mandolux, used under a Creative Commons license]