4 August

The drought relief passion reminded me about PlayPumps. PlayPumps seemed a fantastic idea, water pumps in Africa linked to children’s play equipment, so that as the children played they also pumped water. Ads on the pumps were supposed to generate income to pay for pump maintenance. The pumps generated a lot of interest, the sort of passion we’re seeing for drought relief now. The PlayPumps were a complete failure. Children found them tiring and lost interest in them quickly, and mothers ended up having to mount the play equipment to try to pump water, something that was much harder for them than the old hand pumps the PlayPumps replaced. As Peter Singer has said, too often we’re making the mistake of focusing on a charitable project’s ability to raise awareness and money, and not at all on the effectiveness of the outcomes. Marketing, PR and above all else emotion and sentiment shouldn’t be steering charitable work.