Fwd: The Change Project

[Western Cape Street Children's Forum]

Another angle on the City's awareness campaign.....

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Street People's Forum <streetpe...@gmail.com>

The City of Cape Town recently published a video on YouTube titled "The Change Project". An article on News24 provides more detail about the project. The video aims to promote the City's "Give Responsibly" campaign by demonstrating that "a few coins can keep anyone on the streets".

While I would like to assume that the intention behind this initiative is a noble one, it makes gross errors in over-simplification which I believe will do more harm than good.

The video purports to be a social experiment. It is not. A social experiment requires rigorous attention to scientific procedure, not least of which is ensuring that one's conclusions fit the data and that the data is gathered in a way that is as unambiguous as possible. The conclusion the video (and the article) draws is that people living on the street are there because they can make money by begging. The "data" from the video shows not a single person living on the street interacting with the mechanism of "research" - the vending machine. 

When I watch the video I conclude that ordinary passersby are perplexed by a broken vending machine and probably looking around for Leon Schuster's hidden cameras.

I have no idea how the makers of the video are able to conclude that street people stay on the streets because of begging. Such a conclusion is disingenuous because there are umpteen highly qualified researchers - at least one of whom works for the City! - who could have provided them with more correct information. 

Pessimistically, I may go so far as to suggest that such a conclusion is Machiavellian and is purely meant to justify the City's current policy toward those left out in the cold.

Dressing up such nonsense with a trite "support shelters, not begging" does not save this video from its flaws. There are good reasons why shelters are not an option for those on the street, the most important one being: the shelters are full.

While I support not ever giving money (or anything else) to a child on the street, because there are really excellent opportunities to help children who land on the streets, we need a more nuanced approach to adults.

People seek opportunity in urban centers because that's where opportunity is. All of us do this. Street people are not somehow unique in seeking to better themselves in this way. That there are precious few opportunities in South Africa at the moment is a fault of macro-economic conditions and government policy, not street people. 

Resorting to begging is a last ditch solution. Closing down that last ditch opportunity without making sure that there are realistic, accessible and sufficient alternatives is like pushing someone into a corner. Push hard enough and eventually you will get a push back... 

It is no coincidence to me that the increase in aggressive begging has gone hand in hand with the Give Responsibly campaign. Rather than divert funding from the change in people's pockets to the projects that help people get off the street, the campaign has given the public an excuse to ignore the destitute, making them even more desperate.

Fortunately, not everyone has heeded the campaign's message and there are still numerous examples throughout the city of people befriending and working with those less fortunate souls that they encounter. Some of these relationships are long-standing and mutually beneficial and in the absence of better opportunities, its often the only way to make a living.

The Give Responsibly Campaign and the The Change Project video suffer from the same lack of attention to the complexities of the problem and in so doing provide a licence for cruelty.

Shame on you City of Cape Town!

Take care

Greg Andrews

Convenor

Street People's Forum

082 776 1371

Janice Sparg

COORDINATOR

Western Cape Street Children's Forum

cel: 072 424 3977
email: wcstre...@gmail.com
www.wcscf.co.za*