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Looking Away

2014-09-23 · letter vlog · John · 3:16 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development · mode: Personal essay · tags: fundraising ask, heavy topic

John admits that in Ethiopia he kept looking away from suffering children and worried mothers, argues that changing the world means not looking away but listening, and, since the people he met named water as a basic need, asks viewers to donate to a Water.org fundraiser matched by Bill Gates.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Looking away in Ethiopia: a girl holding her sick brother, families at the hospital, preterm babies, a sick boy awaiting a malaria test

  • ★★ John says that in Ethiopia he talked with a girl clinging to her brother; her mother works in Kuwait, her father in the city, and her grandfather cares for them. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says the girl told him she missed her mom and worried her brother might have pneumonia; the way she held her brother shattered him, and eventually he looked away. — 00:00:10
  • ★★★ John says much of his Ethiopia footage shows him looking away: from families at a hospital, preterm babies under inadequate heat lamps, and a very sick boy his son's age awaiting a malaria test. — 00:00:19 · malaria, Henry Green

00:00:52 — Why he looked away: privacy, powerlessness, and the poor being voiceless in public discourse

  • ★★ John thinks he looked away partly because the moments felt private, though people gave permission, but also because it was hard to watch kids suffer and feel powerless. (hedged) — 00:00:52
  • ★★★ John says the poor are voiceless in too much contemporary discourse: the boy's mother has no Twitter or YouTube channel, so we hear her challenges less directly than others'. — 00:01:04 · Twitter, YouTube, extreme poverty
  • ★★ John suggests that maybe this voicelessness is part of what makes it easier to look away, but regardless, he kept doing it. (hedged) — 00:01:12
  • ★ John says he has hours of footage of his camera looking away; what he videotaped most in Ethiopia was his shoes. (playful) — 00:01:19

00:01:27 — Ethiopia's progress and its remaining poverty; to change the world we must grapple with it as we find it

  • ★★★ John says child death in Ethiopia has dropped by more than two-thirds in 20 years, alongside huge growth in school attendance and in college graduates. — 00:01:27 · child mortality
  • ★★★ John says Ethiopia is still one of the world's poorest countries: malnutrition is common and almost half of Ethiopians don't have access to clean water. — 00:01:38 · extreme poverty
  • ★★★ John understands the urge to look away but thinks changing the world means grappling with it as we find it; a world without children dying of diarrhea and malaria won't come from looking away. (hedged) — 00:01:49 · malaria

00:02:05 — Listening instead of imposing: the people he met all named water as a basic need

  • ★★★ John says looking away makes it hard to listen, and listening is how we learn to actually help rather than imposing our own ideas of what others need. — 00:02:05 · aid effectiveness
  • ★★★ John reports that a Women's Health Army member who walks miles twice a week for drinking water, a health worker and a grandfather all named water among their community's most basic needs. — 00:02:15

00:02:40 — Water.org fundraiser for Ethiopia, matched by Bill Gates; donation ask and sign-off

  • ★★★ John says Water.org set up a Nerdfighter fundraiser for sustainable water in Ethiopia; if $100,000 is raised in 10 days, Bill Gates will match it, bringing safe water to 8,000 people. — 00:02:40 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★★ John says the fundraiser won't end poverty or child mortality but can change 8,000 lives, and asks viewers who can to donate at water.org/johngreen. — 00:02:59 · extreme poverty, child mortality

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Ethiopia · water scarcity · Water.org

Also: People: Bill Gates · Henry Green

Organizations: Twitter · Women's Health Army · YouTube

Terms: doobly-doo

Concepts: aid effectiveness · child mortality · diarrhea · extreme poverty · malaria · malnutrition · pneumonia · Preterm birth

Places: Kuwait

Also centred on Ethiopia: Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia · Baby Names: Thoughts from Rural Ethiopia · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Global Health · Going to College (in Ethiopia) · Bill Gates and John Green Discuss Progress

Also centred on water scarcity: Thoughts from The Well

Also centred on Water.org: Helping Haiti · Thoughts from The Well · Horatio, the Newest Member of our Family · We Built a Well in Haiti

Later videos replying to this one