It’s one of the moments in my life about which I say “wow, how lucky I am that it happened to me”, the moment I received an email of Elda Moreno from her official United Nations email (that she had back then). For those who do not know, she is the current Head of the Children’s Rights and Sport Values Department at the Council of Europe.
It may seem insignificant to some, but that is without the addition that it was a few years ago by now and I was just a young boy when I received her email, and the United Nations still seemed like the highest organisation possible at that time, something I have later on came to realise it is obviously not actually true.
Why do I name this example?
Well, it’s related to a comment I actually received to my previous blog post and the response I had to give to it.
The thing is, I would never even have known Elda Moreno if she wouldn’t have send me that email, she would be there, but I would never even have known about the good she tries to do. Like the title of this blog post says, it’s because what people like she does is mostly behind closed doors.
The comment I received about my previous post has mostly to do with Lumos, an organisation I previously opposed, but these days have come to support. As what I did in my previous blog post was focusing on specifically the orphan claims of anti-institutionalisation campaigns, hence actually why I named the blog post “A closer look: deinstitutionalisation of child care systems”, instead of replacing the first part with “An overview of”.
Still, like my point of this blog post, we had to come to the conclusion that the problem behind why I had to focus on this specific point of the organisations their campaigns was that is what they share to the public, the rest of what they do we close to never hear or see about.
Which is actually a problem, the fact that most of our world’s affairs happen behind closed doors. As that’s why ignorance and the so-called “Fake News” exists, because we only see a part of what happens, and the rest we do not. Our opinions can never be unbiased because of it.
And yet, most of these affairs shouldn’t be behind closed doors to begin with.
Like the previously discussed political affairs as one of the clearest examples, as politicians have an responsibility to us, the people of their countries.
However, this is also the case for the affairs of charities. As whether they like it or not, they ask for our donations, and when they say, for example, that the money will only go to a certain disadvantaged child, we don’t wish to hear after that it didn’t actually go to that child… And yes, that has happened, like with World Vision, the largest and most respected Christian humanitarian organisation, which came under attack by Australian documentary series Foreign Correspondent. As while World Vision offered, and offers, child sponsorship, it turned out that sponsors were lied to. Although World Vision correctly said that the funds don’t go to a singular child, which is actually the case in almost all cases of child sponsorship, there was still the undeniable proof of the visit to the sponsored child which confirmed that she didn’t knew she was sponsored, the only awareness of what she got was a jacket and a pen she received before, and the letters received by the sponsor, which claimed she was learning English and showing improvement, even though she didn’t speak one word English…
And yet, it may be asked, what would be the solution?
Well, kind of simple, make privacy only apply towards the affairs of (regular) people.
Which, yes, will cause problems for certain companies, but when we are completely honest, their need for privacy almost never has do to with legit affairs…
Sadly, however, the reality is that we as regular people actually have less privacy than organisations and companies, and only their affairs are truly behind closed doors…
