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debate on stereotyping.

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It was almost exactly five years ago that I realised something was changing. A video landed on my phone - I was living in Ghana then - raising awareness of "this time of need for Norway". This "need" was winter, and the video was hilarious. Amid scenes of blizzards, vehicles overturned in snow, and children battling through subzero conditions, glamorous (and warm) African pop stars encouraged donations of radiators for Norway. "People don't ignore starving people, so why should they ignore cold people?" they sang.

The song, Radi-Aid, was a clear riff on Band Aid, the Feed the World charity set up in response to the 1984 Ethiopian famine. In the ensuing years, Band Aid has come to epitomise the genre that "radiators for Norway" so mocks: poverty porn.

The colonial perspective has such a strong hold that we regard their very identities as in need of being saved

Poverty porn, wrote Jorgen Lissner, who first popularised the term in 1981 as an appropriate label for the aid campaigns targeting developing countries, "exposes something in human life that is as delicate and deeply personal as sexuality, that is, suffering ... It puts people's bodies, their misery, their grief and their fear on display with all the details and all the indiscretion that a telescopic lens will allow."

Over three decades later, it seems little has changed. This year, three aid campaigns in particular have attracted attention for the wrong reasons: the singer Ed Sheeran, in a Comic Relief appeal to alleviate poverty in Liberia; the actor Tom Hardy, calling for donations to the Disasters Emergencies Committee for the crisis in Yemen; and the actor Eddie Redmayne, in a DEC advert on the famine in East Africa.

SAIH, the Norwegian group that conceived Radi-Aid, has awarded all three campaigns its "rusty radiator award". Its verdicts are damning. The campaign featuring Sheeran - who is so moved by the plight of two boys sleeping rough in a filthy canoe during his visit to Liberia that he personally commits to placing them in a hotel until they can be "sorted out" - is found guilty of a particularly narcissistic white saviour offence, with an aggravated charge of " poverty tourism ".

The DEC campaign starring Hardy, who is also clearly touched by the plight of starving children, receives a similar appraisal. "It is surprising to see the 'white spokesperson trope' in a development video published in 2017," SAIH says. "The video offers no political context ... How is the long-term issue addressed? Awful."

These may seem like harsh verdicts. No one is questioning the celebrities' motive - which seem to me a desire to do good - and Hardy, in particular, attempts to humanise his subjects: "These children live in a far-off country many of us are not familiar with. But they are children nonetheless, children just like yours and mine."

How did the conflict in Yemen begin? interactive

It's the right sentiment, but well-intentioned remarks fail to arouse viewers' empathy when the video has the opposite effect. By showing starving and sick children at their most vulnerable and exposed, it goes against the idea that their dignity is worth as much as his children's, and creates an artificial distinction between "us" and "them". Here we are, the resourceful and benevolent agents of change; and they are the passive others in need of our charity.

There's a simple reason aid agencies use such explicit images: they shock people into giving. And that does, undoubtedly, help alleviate problems in the short term. The East African Emergency campaign between 1980 and 1984, of which Band Aid was a part, brought in £17m for famine relief in Ethiopia. In Yemen, the subject of Hardy's video, 10,000 children have died of preventable diseases. This is a heartbreaking reality, one we should all commit to trying to change.

But what will really effect change is not charity but activism. The problem with adverts of this kind is that, by denying viewers any context as to who "the victims" are, or the structural factors that have contributed to their situation, they give the impression that the suffering is inevitable. It is not. Yemen's humanitarian crisis, which the UN has called the worst in the world, is being exacerbated by the continuing blockade by Saudi Arabia, one of Britain's closest allies. Lobbying the government to stop selling arms to the Saudis would have a far greater impact than charity.

In 2015, the financial assistance received by the 54 countries on the African continent was far outstripped by the $203bn (£150m) taken out of it by multinationals repatriating profits and moving money into tax havens, or by costs imposed by other countries - many of the same nations whose citizens are being fed the idea that only their generosity can save Africa's impoverished children.

These narratives do not exist in a vacuum. The colonial perspective - in which we regard the developing world as a place to plunder, while simultaneously congratulating ourselves on our humanitarian concern for its people - has us in an enduring psychosis. This skews our judgment, allowing us to commit these extreme acts of othering, even when - as is clearly the case with these well-intentioned celebrities - we are trying to help.

It's not that the content of these videos is false. As the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - who has spoken powerfully of the problems of a "single narrative" of the African continent - has put it, the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue. The problem is that they are stereotypes. And in the long run they are powerful enough, in denying people their agency and caricaturing them as beggars lacking dignity, to create more problems than they solve.

* Afua Hirsch is a freelance writer

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Ed Sheeran means well but this poverty porn has to stop | Afua Hirsch

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It was almost exactly five years ago that I realised something was changing. A video landed on my phone - I was living in Ghana then - raising awareness of "this time of need for Norway". This "need" was winter, and the video was hilarious.

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Think before you snap that selfie.

That's the serious message of a joint campaign created by two groups that have spent the past few years poking fun at problematic photos taken by Western volunteers. They often have the tendency to paint themselves as saviors to needy people in low-income countries.

The campaign, launched this month, offers guidelines and a cheeky video to first-time travelers or young volunteers eager to capture every moment of their vacation or mission on Facebook or Instagram. It was created by Radi-Aid, a project of the Norwegian Students' and Academics' International Assistance Fund (SAIH) that fights stereotypes in aid and development, and by Barbie Savior, an Instagram parody account.

According to the campaigners, the selfie takers may not realize that their posts, from the photo to the caption to the hashtags, can perpetuate stereotypes and rob the subject of dignity or privacy.

A seemingly innocent selfie with African kids, for example, can perpetuate the idea that only Western aid, charity and intervention can "save the world," says Beathe Ogard, president of SAIH in Norway. These children are portrayed as helpless and pitiful, Ogard says, while the volunteer is made out to be the superhero who will rescue them from their misery.

Both Radi-Aid and Barbie Savior have gained a cult following for using satire and humor to tackle poverty porn, voluntourism and the white-savior complex. Radi-Aid, for example, made a viral video in 2016 titled " Who Wants To Be A Volunteer?" about a reality show whose grand prize is the chance to "Save Africa!" It has more than a million views.

Barbie Savior spoofs volunteer photography by recreating popular images using Barbie dolls and Photoshop. A recent entry portrayed Barbie sitting on a pit toilet. The caption: "Did you know that 112 percent of the people living in the country of Africa don't have access to toilets? #squatitlikeitshot." The account has more than 120,000 followers.

Despite their efforts, Barbie Savior and Radi-Aid have continued to observe "simplified and unnuanced photos playing on the white-savior complex, portraying Africa as a country, the faces of white Westerners among a myriad of poor African children, without giving any context at all," Ogard says. The proliferation of these posts, she suspects, is the result of social media becoming a big part of how we communicate.

That's what makes the guidelines so crucial, says Adeela Warley, CEO of CharityComms, a network of communications professionals working in U.K.-based nonprofits. "In the age of instant communications, it's too easy to press 'go,' " she says. "You still see so many images that make [impoverished people] look passive and helpless as opposed to empowered. People need to take the time to think about the stories their [social media posts] are telling."

Ogard and the co-founder of Barbie Savior, Emily Worrall, hope that the guide will make young volunteers and travelers more aware of what they're posting. Advice in the ten-point checklist includes: Be respectful of different cultures and traditions, avoid sweeping generalizations, challenge perceptions.

The campaigners also want photo-takers to question their own intentions. Are they just posting the photos for "likes"?

Worrall recalls her own experience a decade ago. When she was 17, she went on a volunteer trip to Uganda. She shared photos of herself and the orphans she was helping with her family and friends. They showered her with praise. "They told me, 'Wow, you're doing such amazing work.' They put me on a pedestal," she says. At the time, she didn't consider the children's privacy or vulnerability. Years later, it became inspiration for this Barbie Savior post:

That image is one of many cliched visual tropes that Ogard and Worrall have observed. They shared examples of the kinds of photos volunteers should avoid when traveling to the developing world:

Photos of volunteers giving candy or high fives to children.

These can give the viewer the impression that such small gestures can change a child's life when "in reality it has no impact. A lot of these people make empty promises and never come back to the community," says Worrall, who has worked in Uganda as a development consultant for seven years. She recreated the image for Barbie Savior in August 2016.

Photos of children on playgrounds.

"We're constantly reproducing these images that have no respect for informed consent," Ogard says. "In Norway, I would never show up at a school and take a selfie with kids playing."

Photos of sick children in hospital beds.

The campaigners illustrate this point in their animated video. The young volunteer takes a selfie with a sick child in a hospital bed while bored hospital staffers look on. "It completely disregards the child's needs," Worrall says.

For years, communicators in the field of global development have been working to fight stereotype-reinforcing images in charity ads through awareness campaigns and codes of ethics. But few specifically address social media or are geared toward young people.

Susan Krenn is the executive director of Johns Hopkins University's Center for Communication Programs, and her work centers on global development and public health programs overseas. While the university has a cultural orientation program for students traveling abroad, there are no hard and fast rules for how to portray their experience on social media. "I have not seen a resource like this," she says of the guidelines. "We'd use it. It's quite helpful, clear and easy."

Ogard and Worrall don't want the guidelines to discourage volunteers from posting photos on social media. They just want photo-takers to reflect on what they're sharing. Ask for a subject's consent, they say. Show your social followers something different.

If you need inspiration, Worrall says, check out some of the positive imagery from charities that received a Golden Radiator award in Radi-Aid's annual contest for the best and worst charity ads. These ads, like those from an NGO called Mama Hope, show local people actively engaged in helping others in their community.

If you're staying with a family in a low-income environment and they allow you to take a photo with their children, use it as a "great opportunity to challenge stereotypes," Worrall says. That might mean providing details and context - names, locations, personal stories - in an extended caption on social media.

And if a child gets excited when they see you pull out your tablet or smartphone and ask to take a photo with you, that doesn't mean it's OK to do so. "It's a cop out to say, well, they want it," Worrall says. "A child can't make that kind of decision."

"Think of how they would view the photo if they found it at 25 years old," she adds. "How would it make them feel?"

Your Turn
Have you ever felt conflicted about taking a selfie with children in low-income countries? Share your experience with @NPRGoatsandSoda on Twitter.

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Volunteering Abroad? Read This Before You Post That Selfie

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Think before you snap that selfie. That's the serious message of a joint campaign created by two groups that have spent the past few years poking fun at problematic photos taken by Western volunteers. They often have the tendency to paint themselves as saviors to needy people in low-income countries.