Haiti & Cause Fatigue

Magogodi Makhene
Co-Founder, Zenzele Circle

I just caught a tweet from Ashoka’s Social Media Director, Tom Dawkins:

@tomjd: What’s a good topic for the next #4change chat? One suggestion I like is "cause fatigue". What else should we cover this year?

What catches my attention is "cause fatigue". I love having language to describe something inevitable working in the social entrepreneurial space. How many times have you avoided someone on the street selling you their cause for a cleaner environment or global children’s hunger? How much can you afford to be side-tracked by causes that are unrelated to your own? And how do you make that judgement call?

I am especially interested in this topic today, in light of the earthquake that’s struck Haiti. Interested because of the very primal and raw response I have to do something about Haiti’s natural disaster. I’d be lying if I said the Tsunami of 2004 struck the same chord in me. There is something about Haiti that feels particularly close and unsettling to me. Perhaps it’s how fragile the country’s infrastructure is. There are too many similarities to Africa. How prepared was Haiti for an emergency response of any kind before the quake? If we accept that Haiti’s improverished state is similar to Africa’s, perhaps this disaster is something of a proxy for how prepared an African nation would be in the face of such an emergency. Of course, an emergency is exactly that–unforseen and catastrophic. No amount of preparation is ever adequate, even in a wealthy country. Remember Katrina?

To Do Something for Haiti: