Being Brave With Others’ Money and Faces
A charity pushing into Africa tried to recruit me. I poked around to learn what it was up to. The results were disturbing.
I sometimes make dumb decisions. It’s probably why I’m poor. I wrote a book years ago, Gangs in Canada, and while a couple of folks urged me to “cash in” on this and try to chase more media attention and speaker gigs, I never liked the idea of some family seeing their kid get shot in the street, and my response to this was supposed to be, “Oooh, ka-ching! CBC News will be calling in a minute.” They did. So did CTV News. So did newspapers. And I stopped taking such calls. Ech.
It was also unpleasant to discover that there is a whole cottage industry of other gang book authors and self-declared experts who make a tidy sum by “advising” cities, often with the same recycled, microwaved analysis about inner-city poverty, lack of resources, etc. being supposedly behind gangs, which is at best a huge oversimplification and often total bullshit. Didn’t want to be one of those.
But it seems there’s a fair amount of money — as well as whole careers — to be made from other people’s suffering.
Days ago, I got an email from a company in the UK called Mifu that specializes in “Micro-influencer marketing.” I’m not sure if they mean the marketing is micro or I’m a micro-influencer. I’m six feet tall with close to 79,000 followers on X, thousands more on YouTube and Facebook, so… meh, you decide.
What did these guys want? It turned out they were working for something called The Brave Movement, “a survivor-centered global movement fighting to end childhood sexual violence.” They were “interested in working with some influencers to promote the launch of their new documentary and petition calling for stricter legislation. We’ve reviewed your profile and believe you would be a great fit for this opportunity!
“We’re looking for creators to make informative posts which highlight the issue of child sexual abuse, promote the documentary, and include a call to action for viewers to get involved.”
Well, as much as all that sounds very noble, I’m a cynical and not very trusting guy, and I wondered immediately why an organization trying to prevent childhood sexual violence needs paid influencers?
Okay, let’s get the obvious out of the way. I have lost track of the number of women I’ve personally met and know who have either been raped or have gone through childhood sexual assault. I once interviewed a seasoned Calgary reporter who got the equivalent of a “ride along” with police officers who hunted pedophiles; he had the chance to review what they sifted through, and it was harrowing. There’s a reason why cops can often handle only up to two years in the unit. I don’t think I’d last a day.
So, doing what’s reasonable and needed to stop this kind of thing? Of course, no brainer.
But there is something inherently off about recruiting and paying influencers to back such an organization. It not only demeans the cause with its mercenary approach, it subverts its very legitimacy, as if safeguarding children and stopping pedophiles was like stumping for a political candidate. You’re being asked to shill for stopping child sexual abuse the way you might get enlisted to promote your favorite skin cream or brand of barbecue sauce.
Don’t get me wrong. People need to be compensated for their work. As I got more involved first with Ethiopia’s war against a terrorist cult, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and then with the Amhara people’s fight for survival in that country, the typical catcall from idiots was: “Oh, you’re paid to say that.” Except most of the time I wasn’t. And I could deflate character smears by being open and honest when I did get paid, which was for my reporting work on two separate trips to Ethiopia and some communications writing for a couple of diaspora organizations.
The point being that people knew I believed enough in the cause, and I was transparent when I needed to pay the rent. And if you work directly for an organization, people know where you stand.
Now, in fairness, Mifu included in its email this somewhat disingenuous phrase, “if you aren’t interested in a paid campaign but wish to support anyway, please let us know and we can discuss the details further.” This leaves a mild aftertaste that it knows there’s something off with its paid option. Because why not start by asking you to support their efforts out of genuine feeling rather than dangle the money incentive first? The subject line of its first email was, “Brave Movement Charity Campaign: Paid Opportunity.”
I don’t own my own home, I rent in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I have a roommate. I live hand to mouth while seeking more permanent gigs. So “£150 [about $260 Cdn] for a post outlining a bit about the movement and the petition/documentary” is nothing to sneeze at for me these days, though it’s well below my professional rate for writing services. It also turns out to be a pittance when you consider other factors (more about that later).
And alas, I have a conscience.
If I’m going to be a media whore, I prefer to be a whore for something I can believe in and that’s on the up and up. I consider myself very lucky that I dodged a bullet and ended up with a cancelled job interview ages ago for the bottom feeder WE charity run by Marc and Craig Kielburger. Its toxic office culture and sleazy business practices were eventually exposed through separate and superb investigative reporting by Canadaland and CBC’s The Fifth Estate.
So. Time to do some detective work. As it turns out, when you go on the Brave Movement’s website, there are several red flags, and it’s hard to tell whether this is shoddiness and lack of communications skills or if they genuinely don’t feel like sharing. Their website certainly needs updating. For instance, there are PDFs available in multiple languages referring to the call on the G7 to act for when it met in 2022:
That’s nice. But how should prevention, healing and justice programs be “scaled” in countries. What does that even mean in terms of tangible steps and results? Its website tells us, “There are clear solutions which would see children better protected, more justice for survivors achieved and better support for healing and trauma relief.” Okay, what are they? Specifically. Because you search the website in vain for a real drill-down in specifics.
The closest I came to this was in a news release I found online which states that Brave Movement “is reigniting action on the Africa Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, also known as the Malabo Convention, which came into force in 2023. Brave Africa will push for member states to sign and ratify this convention and expand the scope of online offences to include grooming, sextortion, online trafficking, livestream sexual abuse and all other forms of online offences.”
Sounds good. And you’ll note above in the screenshot provided that BM was also pushing for a G7 “Action Plan to Combat Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” a while back.
And BM devotes a LOT of attention to the issue of childhood sexual abuse in Africa (like so many NGOs and charities, “Africa” is used in the news release headlines — the entire continent, not individual countries). But when you check its virtual map that supposedly “tracks the Brave Movement’s activity across the world, demonstrating the global support for our mission,” well… that support is awfully modest for a massive continent. See for yourself how few countries have any presence, and their cute icons don’t necessarily mean the organization has a lasting footprint there.
It’s not clear whether BM is merely quoting WHO director Tedros Adhanom, but I presume they got his permission to use him on their branding. I’m also guessing BM’s founders have no clue that this man is considered a war criminal by Ethiopians, an incompetent con man who embezzled millions, let scores of Ethiopians die from cholera, and botched the Covid pandemic crisis.
If BM is that clueless about Tedros, imagine its ignorance about what’s really going on in various African countries?
And you go down a rabbit hole to try to figure out just who’s behind the organization (I was told later that it “doesn’t have its own CEO”). Its website is hosted by Together for Girls, which according to its LinkedIn page, is “a global public-private partnership dedicated to ending violence against children, particularly sexual violence against girls.” It was founded in 2009 and “brings together six UN agencies, the governments of the United States and Canada, several private sector organizations…. UN partners include UNICEF, UNAIDS, UN Women, WHO/PAHO, the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, and UNFPA.”
So yes, Tedros’ organization is in that alphabet soup.
You find in the Brave Movement’s “Newsroom” articles appearing on Euronews and Business Ghana that mention it, and Al Jazeera has given BM a platform for its staff and co-founders to write opinion pieces no less than six times. And yes, this should concern you because this is not news, it’s not reporting — it’s messaging from an organization that is on a constant fundraising drive.
And where does the Brave Movement get its funding? Nowhere on its website is there is a tab or page dedicated to that. I found by sheer accident a news release dated February 21, 2024 on the Together for Girls website announcing that BM had received a $230,000 U.S. grant from the UBS Optimus Foundation — which is exactly what it sounds like, the arm of a big, fat Swiss investment bank.
The grant, according to the release, “will support the Brave Movement plans to engage with the African Union to advocate for policy and legal reforms across the continent that focus on prevention, healing and justice and are led by survivors of childhood sexual violence.”
The Brave Movement looks very much like it has borrowed the model of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and International Crisis Group, all organizations that rake in big bucks while making the right noises about human rights issues and developing world crises. Who can argue with wanting to prevent childhood sexual abuse? Yet notice what they do.
They’ve taken in almost a quarter of a million dollars just to nudge the African Union, presumably over its Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection mentioned earlier.
But why is this needed at all from an outside charity based elsewhere? (Presumably the United States, as Together for Girls hosts its website, and that organization lists an address in Washington, D.C., yet its communications director for both groups is in the UK.)
The Brave Movement wants to “engage” with the African Union — by definition a political bloc of member nations on the continent, and if it needs a boot in the ass, shouldn’t this really come from African lobbyists, African ad hoc organizations, and a crusading African media?
And if UBS cares so much, why does it want to launder its profits through a charity group for it? The size of the investment suggests a prolonged effort, but it sounds a lot like a corporate tax write-off that very conveniently gives BM staff something to do.
In March of this year, Together for Girls and The Brave Movement got $100,000 more from the World Childhood Foundation to support “key pillars of Together for Girls’ and Brave’s work, including advocating for a safer internet for children, addressing the gap in global data on sexual violence against children, expanding Brave’s regional platforms around the world with the aim of building political will to drive lasting change.”
For “expanding regional platforms around the world” and “building political will,” read lobbying.
Who is the World Childhood Foundation? It’s an operation out of Sweden that relies on a long list of corporate sponsors such as Volvo and Handelsbanken.
But again, why is Western corporate money — as well as UN public money — being sunk into organizations which seem to devote much of their time and work to lobbying governments?
UN members can talk to themselves and hardly need intermediary groups to raise concerns over childhood sexual abuse or any other human rights issue. That’s what diplomats are for. And as with the funding behind Crisis Group, HRW and Amnesty, it’s interesting how big European corporate money finds its way into urgent issues in the developing world.
The Together for Girls website seems to have a bigger footprint in Africa and has news releases going back years on initiatives — mostly on “violence against children and youth surveys” — in places such as Lesotho, Mozambique, Kenya, Zambia, and the list goes on, and that’s all great, especially in terms of collecting crucially needed data information. But again…
Why are these organizations actually needed? And why can’t all the money they’re given be donated instead to African NGOs and institutions?
If the partner countries are by definition politically stable enough to allow in Together for Girls and the Brave Movement to operate, it stands to reason that they are stable enough for their own charity infrastructure and institutions to directly accept funding.
Funny. I could not find one news release on Together for Girls, let alone the Brave Movement, devoted to any initiatives on childhood sexual abuse in the United States, Canada, or Europe (and if they try to slip one in after this article comes out, well, I’ve got screen shots of what was up there before on its websites). I’m looking but haven’t found yet any recent trumpeting releases by them on foundation grants to lobby over sexual childhood abuse in Britain. And I recall living in the UK two decades ago when the pedophile population was estimated at a disturbing 100,000.
In the past few days, Canada has been rocked by the revelation that Nobel Prize-winning writer Alice Munro stayed with her husband, who sexually abused her daughter from her first marriage — even after this cretin pleaded guilty in court to a charge of indecent assault.
This is clearly a problem with victims in North America and Europe. So, if these are truly “global” organizations, why so much attention paid to the situations in the developing world?
I think I have the answer. Because there, the money taps won’t turn off. As with HRW or Crisis Group, the solution to human rights issues, rape as a war crime, and childhood sexual abuse will seemingly never be on the horizon. While the Brave Movement and Together for Girls can go through the motions of lobbying, the actions taken and decision making aren’t really up to them, and therefore they never have to be held accountable, except maybe for an expense voucher now and then. The funds will keep pouring in, and it’s a great racket.
Now in my original request for an interview sent to BM, I had written this: “As my conscience isn’t normally for sale, and I prefer to be well informed about any cause I endorse, I tried to educate myself on your organization’s positions, but I regret to say I couldn’t find answers from the Brave Movement website to several questions that I have.”
When the director of communications for both Together for Girls and the Brave Movement, Marek Pruszewicz got in touch, our exchanges turned into marathon back-and-forth of 11 emails in total. Interestingly, he found the reference to my conscience “alarming.” I wrote back to say that it “ties directly into a question I have for you.” I needed responses to be on the record, but “I would make a point of quoting my own line in the story to give your answer full context.” Which, ta-da, I have.
To make the Great Epic of the Email Exchanges shorter, I’ll skip to the part where even though I asked repeatedly for a phone interview with an original deadline of Monday for publication, Pruszewicz declared, “We’d be happy to start looking at your questions on Monday if you’re ok to share them.”
No self-respecting reporter I know would send their questions in advance unless under very unusual circumstances. No traditional journalism school worth attending considers this a best practice, as it’s inherently unethical. You’re creating a power imbalance with your source, who is now free to prepare canned replies when they’re good and ready instead of giving you an immediate answer in the moment. Yes, in our age of Facebook DMs and emails, you see it more frequently done these days, but that does not make it right. In this case, it was completely unnecessary, and neither one of us is living in Putin’s Russia or in Iran or in Myanmar.
Pruszewicz also wrote: “I’m assuming Monday is a flexible deadline as you’re not writing for a timed publication.”
Cute. I did mention power imbalance, right?
All this is awfully strange for a charity organization — two organizations, in fact, since BM is so closely wrapped up with Together for Girls — which have partnerships with major UN groups.
I wrote him back to say that I interpreted his response as declining my request for a phone interview and that “as to the ‘flexibility’ of my publication, it’s flexible in that I can go ahead with publishing my material now that I have your answer.”
Pruszewicz sent “one last reply before the weekend,” claiming that it was “entirely reasonable” to request my questions in advance and to respond in writing, and that he had done so “with many journalists representing major news organizations. They have all been fine with it. As a BBC News Editor for nearly 20 years, I also know it’s entirely reasonable for an organization to decide how to respond to a media request. I don’t ever recall demanding an organization respond only in the way I saw fit. BBC editorial standards would not allow it.”
Well, I can play that game, too, as I’ve now worked as a professional writer and journalist for forty years for news operations big and small, and as many African readers know all too well, the BBC is hardly the gold standard of ethics these days for reporting on their continent.
It’s obviously entirely up to you if you don’t wish to give us any right to reply to anything you wish to publish,” wrote Pruszewicz. This is disingenuous, as I did give him the right to reply. The truth is that he insisted his organization would only reply as it saw fit when it saw fit. Again, no self-respecting news organization or reporter would accept this.
“But it does rather suggest you’ve already made-up your mind about what you want to write. I do think it would help with accuracy. For example, we don’t have ‘a marketing company.”
Again, cute. Suggest bias, imply lack of attention to accuracy. But while I phrased things in one instance as your marketing company, at no time did I ever suggest BM owned Mifu but had merely hired it — something Mifu confirmed in an email to me when its contact person wrote that it was “employed by the charity…” So, yes, sir, this kind of makes Mifu yours, and your persnickety focus on details is a lot of hot air.
But let’s get back to the big picture, which in the end is what really matters. I can hear as I type this, “How dare you doubt the sincerity of our resolve!” Somebody will say it. And maybe I would hear from staff: “Many of us are survivors ourselves of childhood sexual abuse!” Okay. But the cause itself is not the issue, it’s the whole charity infrastructure and self-perpetuating business, and I and others have every right to question what’s going on.
Especially when you knock on my door, ask for my help, and you lead with the suggestion of a price for that help.
Not that I was terribly interested, but I’ve just discovered that influencers don’t make nearly as much money as you might think. I mentioned earlier that the rate offered is a pittance, and let’s finally come back to that. It’s not so much the rate that I find insulting as the inherent assumption that I or any other “influencer” is a rube, easy to con with a low bid for my services. Who, after all, thinks of a charity as sitting on a big pile of cash? Yet time and again, we’ve seen the lion’s share of funds for certain charities go for “administration,” and lest we forget, this is a group that got hundreds of thousands of dollars from UBS and a foundation backed by corporate sponsors.
Yet supposedly, promoting their message requires buying what, for lack of a better term, is my “projected conscience.” I’m supposed to look like I care but I’ve really been bought off.
No, thanks. I don’t sell myself that cheap. Where it gets really offensive is that at first, I wondered, Why did this marketing firm approach me? Sure, I got more than 78K followers on X, but most are a very special demographic. The Brave Movement’s issue is childhood sexual abuse and they called themselves a “global” organization, so I didn’t clue in right away. Did they not do their homework on me when they “reviewed my profile?”
But after digging around, I realized that someone, whether at Mifu or the Brave Movement or both perhaps hoped to buy a Judas goat to sell to the Africans that this charity is a good thing. After all, they already have UBS dough and foundation cash and a very small handful of African governments willing to let them through the door, but somebody must have realized you need to manufacture consent among the locals.
That would be a no, a hell no from me. Because the last thing African countries need is yet another charity leech sucking on their flesh over an issue that requires profoundly insightful, committed solutions from their own citizens — something, by the way, that we take for granted as the preferred approach in developed nations.
Africans are no less deserving of respect for any efforts at problem-solving on their own, even when it comes to fighting the most depraved abuse of their children.
