Zero Shirts and Counting
So, if you haven't been following, the internet kerfluffle over 1MillionShirts is continuing to gather steam. Here's a summary in a nutshell.
Two entrepreneurs, who normally run the iwearyourshirt site, where they, somewhat unsurprisingly, wear your company's shirt, either got an idea on their own or got it suggested to them. They wanted to help out people in Africa. In line with what they normally do, they had the idea of creating a donation drive; donate your old shirts, along with a $1 bill to pay for shipping (that's $1 irregardless of the number of shirts you send), and those shirts will then be shipped to Africa, where they can be donated to poor people.
Of course the professionals all went nuclear. William Easterly immediately gets into the mess, pointing out that the fact that the charity needs you to send $1 to ship "bulky low-value T-shirts" indicates a major flaw with the charity: namely, T-shirts are bulky, fairly low value, and will take up a lot of money and shipping space that you could otherwise use to send medicines, or parts for desalinization plants, or basically anything else. Tales From the Hood gets downright irritable, basically pointing out that aid has both standards and purpose, and that randomly sending T-shirts not only does minimal good, it can actually do harm. The always wonderful Texas in Africa attempts to provide alternatives and gives them the benefit of the doubt. All of them point out the obvious, of all the things Africa lacks that the West can provide (and there are a whole lot of them) used clothing is not one of them. Nor is used clothing high on the wish list in the parts of Africa they can reach. Moreover Africa has a large but endangered textile and retail industry; the last thing they need is to lose jobs as Americans dump a million cheap T-shirts on the market.
This all would have been blown over and forgotten probably, if the original proprietors of the idea hadn't jumped back in the fray in an approach that gets the wank senses going. Testy, easily mocked diatribe about how critics need to "man up", replete with illogical assumptions? check. Refusal to debate the issue on public forums? check. Being surprised when a wild idea that they didn't run through the professionals gets heavy criticism from said professionals? Check, check, check. On the non-jerk side, they do provide a phone number that they can be contacted at (although this of limited use to a great many of their critics in distant parts of the world), and Texas in Africa claims that she has exchanged emails, and they are open to criticism. So they're not really jerks; they're just acting like it.
Basically, of all the things you could spend money on, shipping your dirty, used shirts halfway around the world, over a horribly undeveloped transportation system, is probably right down there with investing it with guys going to Vegas. You can rest assured that the kid on the other end of the line unpacking your old gym shirts is going to wish that you had kept your shirts, and sent the $1 instead.
Two entrepreneurs, who normally run the iwearyourshirt site, where they, somewhat unsurprisingly, wear your company's shirt, either got an idea on their own or got it suggested to them. They wanted to help out people in Africa. In line with what they normally do, they had the idea of creating a donation drive; donate your old shirts, along with a $1 bill to pay for shipping (that's $1 irregardless of the number of shirts you send), and those shirts will then be shipped to Africa, where they can be donated to poor people.
Of course the professionals all went nuclear. William Easterly immediately gets into the mess, pointing out that the fact that the charity needs you to send $1 to ship "bulky low-value T-shirts" indicates a major flaw with the charity: namely, T-shirts are bulky, fairly low value, and will take up a lot of money and shipping space that you could otherwise use to send medicines, or parts for desalinization plants, or basically anything else. Tales From the Hood gets downright irritable, basically pointing out that aid has both standards and purpose, and that randomly sending T-shirts not only does minimal good, it can actually do harm. The always wonderful Texas in Africa attempts to provide alternatives and gives them the benefit of the doubt. All of them point out the obvious, of all the things Africa lacks that the West can provide (and there are a whole lot of them) used clothing is not one of them. Nor is used clothing high on the wish list in the parts of Africa they can reach. Moreover Africa has a large but endangered textile and retail industry; the last thing they need is to lose jobs as Americans dump a million cheap T-shirts on the market.
This all would have been blown over and forgotten probably, if the original proprietors of the idea hadn't jumped back in the fray in an approach that gets the wank senses going. Testy, easily mocked diatribe about how critics need to "man up", replete with illogical assumptions? check. Refusal to debate the issue on public forums? check. Being surprised when a wild idea that they didn't run through the professionals gets heavy criticism from said professionals? Check, check, check. On the non-jerk side, they do provide a phone number that they can be contacted at (although this of limited use to a great many of their critics in distant parts of the world), and Texas in Africa claims that she has exchanged emails, and they are open to criticism. So they're not really jerks; they're just acting like it.
Basically, of all the things you could spend money on, shipping your dirty, used shirts halfway around the world, over a horribly undeveloped transportation system, is probably right down there with investing it with guys going to Vegas. You can rest assured that the kid on the other end of the line unpacking your old gym shirts is going to wish that you had kept your shirts, and sent the $1 instead.