A few years ago, I travelled to Burkina Faso, a small land locked country in west Africa with the charity Christian Aid.
The purpose of the visit was to report on work helping local people tackle the impact of climate change on how they farm and also the empowerment of women who were fighting for land rights.
There are parts of the country that are modern, the capital city pretty much like any other capital you’d visit, full of office blocks and business men and women going about their work.
The more remote parts appeared unchanged in centuries, apart from the phone masts that now dot the dusty landscape.
The trip was uplifting, the women we met formidable, determined that education would lift their children out of poverty and therefore doing all in their power to make sure their daughters were sent to school.
Most had seven or eight children, contraception is slowly becoming socially acceptable.
It did not feel alien or a place apart, in fact the women I spoke to almost all reminded me of my own mother, without a proper education but determined to make sure her eight children would have a different life than she had.
I was reminded of that trip when over the weekend MP David Lammy criticised Comic Relief and the celebrity Stacey Dooley for continuing to flog tired old tropes about the continent of Africa in their fundraising campaigns, that often involve sending a celebrity to stand around in a slum looking sad.
That those celebrities are often white, Lammy said created an image of the ‘white saviour’ coming to help the poor, helpless Africans.
His comments received a mixed response.
I was bemused at the amount of people on social media who had previously worshipped at the altar of far-right extremist Stephen Yaxley Lennon, otherwise known as Tommy Robinson, who all of a sudden claimed to be regular donors to Comic Relief.
Obviously they are now stopping that subscription because of Lammy’s comments. I rolled my eyes at their mock concern.
Others, including myself, agreed with the Labour MP, and hear me out, I have my reasons.
Stacey Dooley, until her win on Strictly Come Dancing, was best known for making documentaries for BBC Three, aimed at a youth audience, her wide-eyed little girl lost style isn’t for me but then I’m not her target audience.
It is clear someone like her has a huge following that Comic Relief hope will draw attention to the charity and therefore increase donations.
However, the picture of her posing with a rather confused looking toddler on her hip in Uganda was in poor taste.
African children are not accessories.
If any of us were to visit a food bank this week to make a donation and while there noticed a family waiting to use the charity’s services, would you or I feel it appropriate to pick up one of the children and take a picture of ourselves with them?
Why then is it deemed appropriate to pick up poor, foreign children, with no autonomy in that way?
This is not about Dooley as a person, it could have applied to any of the countless celebrities who have done the same Comic Relief tear jerker films.
Africa is not a country, it is a continent made up of over 50 countries, some of which are fertile and rich in natural resources.
However, some of those countries, due to centuries of colonial misrule, war, plunder of resources, and the misdistribution of wealth, have a population that need help and deserve our charity.
That can be done in an empowering way. Comic Relief haven’t changed their style of fundraising in years and it needs to consider if just filming pretty people in a refuse tip holding a nameless child is an ethical way to do that.
The projects the charity run do amazing work and that work would be better articulated by the people on the ground carrying it out.
It does not require a celebrity to tell that story.
Journalists who visited my estate in west Belfast when I was growing up often filmed us while speaking to a camera as if surrounded by exhibits in a zoo, without ever taking the time to understand the complexities of our situation.
I have said countless times before, I wanted to be a journalist to tell my own story and allow people around me to tell theirs.
Why can’t the people of Uganda tell their own story?
If as privileged people we need to see a teary-eyed celebrity holding a half-starved child before we hand over money to help, what does that say about us?
Stacey Dooley should not be held personally responsible for the cloying paternalism of Comic Relief, but maybe this debate will modernise how we consider charity, so that it can bring dignity to those in need rather than exploit their plight for a quick return.
