Ed Sheeran filmed a series of adverts for Comic Relief which see him meeting children in Liberia, West Africa, who are living in poverty.
The videos Sheeran appeared in were actually filmed over 9 months ago – but have resurfaced now that an aid watchdog has labelled one of them as ‘poverty porn.’
The advert has been nominated as one of the ‘most offensive’ campaigns of 2017 by the Radi-Aid awards, organised by the Norwegian Students and Academics International Assistance Fund (Saih) which aims to challenge stereotypes about people living in poverty.
One video shows a young girl called Peaches talking about her father who died from the Ebola virus, singing a song her father taught her and crying as she remembers him, while Sheeran sits next to her welling up.
“The last thing I always wanted this trip to be was the celebrity who comes over to Africa and cries on TV and says send your money over,” Sheeran says in a piece to camera.
“I wanted to come and be like, ‘everything’s positive, everything’s cool…’ This is always what celebrities do and I always think ‘is it really that bad?'”
“Then I turn up and yes it is. That’s just one girl… and it’s the girl that came up to talk to us, and was the smiliest, and there’s so many kids out here that I’ve gone to talk to and tried to speak to that just shut off, and if she’s the smiliest one and she’s got that story, God knows what the other stories are.”
The second video, which is the one nominated by the Radi-Aid awards jury, shows Sheeran meeting homeless boy JD after discovering him sleeping rough in a canoe on the beach.
“It’s quite odd,” says Sheeran, “I’m on a beach, and you would assume that a hot weather beach would be paradise, but this is far from it, I’ve never felt so on edge.”
The scene cuts to footage of homeless boys sleeping in canoes on the beach, seemingly unaware that they are being filmed and observed by Ed Sheeran.
After they talk, Sheeran says he can’t leave the area until he has secured some kind of shelter for JD and his friends – so he pays for them to stay in a house out of his own pocket.
At the end of both videos, which were filmed by the London -based organisation Disasters Emergencies Committee (DEC), he encourages viewers to donate money to comic relief.
Sheeran says he can’t leave the area until he has secured some kind of shelter for JD and his friends – so he pays for them to stay in a house out of his own pocket.
According to the Radi-Aid awards jury; “Ed Sheeran’s video is basically about himself, and reinforces the stereotype of ‘the white savior’.
“Fundraising campaigns about hunger catastrophes are not easy to make, but the way DEC videos depict these issues is unnecessarily oversimplified.”
These kinds of adverts are nothing new, charities have been using images and tragic stories of poor black children for years to tug on the heart strings of people around the world with a little extra money to spare.
The white celebrity is the one who flies into the country, saves these children from poverty and changes their lives, then flies back out again all while being hailed as a saviour.
Using videos and images of black children living in poverty might seem like the best way to get people to donate – but you’re robbing them of their dignity in the meantime – and we have to consider whether we ever see children in poverty who aren’t ethnic minorities shown in this way.
Other adverts nominated include Tom Hardy’s appeal for Yemen and an Africa Famine appeal presented by actor Eddie Redmayne which shows footage of emaciated black bodies.
It’s not necessarily Ed Sheeran and the other celebrities that are at fault here, Sheeran at least didn’t leave the boys sleeping rough, and according to Music magazine NME, JD’s life was improved by meeting him, “If I had not met Street Child and Ed, I would still be sleeping in canoes on the beach,” he says.
But can’t we find a smarter way to have these discussions about poverty, while still retaining the dignity of those struggling to survive?
Hopefully these nominations, and the golden radiator award nominations for best adverts in fundraising communication, will go some way to challenging presentations of poverty abroad for a western audience.
The article was originally published on The Debrief.
