Purple cows for aid transparency

Development cooperation is not really high in the agenda for most citizens in donor countries. The financial crisis, the reform of the education sector and the news of the football championship are more likely to attract attention. When it comes to development cooperation there is weariness and a lot of scepticm in the general public. Each time I talk about my work with a local shop assistant, my neighbour, the hairdresser and other people in my environment, the inevitable question is "But does aid really reach the poor people?" In the past aid agencies have used pictures of starving children, of drought-striken landscapes and empoverished farmers to touch the compassion of people and to justify their work. But we have seen starving children so many times. Aid agencies have asked for our donations for so many years. Why are things not changing?

The focus on results and aid effectiveness, very high on the agenda in donor agencies for the last ten years, are one response to this challenge. Indeed, there is much room for improvement in aid effectiveness. But to communicate impact based on highly sophisticated indicators and on highly rigorous research designs is a challenge in itself. Lamenting over the floods of images and information in the media and the short span of attention of many citizens will not help us. We just have to become better at communicating.

As Seth Godin in his TED talk on "standing out" points out: People do not pay attention to cows standing on a meadow beside the highway, but they will notice purple cows standing there. At least for some time. In addition, we can not longer get away with presenting simplified version of the aid reality. We need to be able to communicate complexity. In the open data movement the visualisation of data is popular and indeed there are some stunning examples of data visualisations on the net. But development is not only data. We need to find new and outstanding ways to visualise and communicate complex relationships in economics, politics and society.

Take aid transparency for example! How can I communicate to my neighbour in two sentences or in one picture why aid transparency is important? The bad news is, I have not yet come up with the solution. I have been playing around with an image to illustrate which stakeholders hold important information in the aid business. But I am not really satisfied with it but I am convinced me need to explore new ways to get our message across. Let us get together and do purple cows!