Transition: more about Oxfam

In Transition: being new, I wrote about the experience of my first couple of days at Oxfam GB. Here are some more thoughts about that experience, and about Oxfam.

When we think about Oxfam, I guess for many of us the following comes to mind:

• disasters – Haiti, Pakistan
• Oxfam shops
• those billboard ads that are all over the place right now – for example, this one or this one

Until I started to volunteer in my local Oxfam shop last year, I had a vague sense that Oxfam ‘did’ emergencies and made the right noises about poverty. I didn’t understand the way three key areas of work – emergency response, development work and campaigning – intertwine to serve the organisation’s overall aim of working with others to find lasting solutions to poverty and suffering.

Within the three key areas Oxfam works on climate change because the effects of climate change are being felt here and now by the world’s poorest people. It works to make trade fair so that producers in poor countries can get enough for their work to keep themselves and their families out of poverty, and are not priced out of the market by rich countries’ subsidies for their producers. It works on education and health because education is a way out of poverty, and lack of affordable (or any) health care both hits the poorest hardest and keeps them in poverty when illness strikes. It works to support gender equality, because you’re more likely to be poor if you’re a woman; it works on rebalancing the relationship between debt and aid to enable poor countries to spend their money on essential infrastructure rather than debt repayments; and it works on helping poor people make their voice heard.

I’m working in a team that tries to get Oxfam’s message across to communities in Britain, supporting activists and campaigns. The style of communication we are encouraged to use is known within Oxfam as ‘provocative optimism’. Provocative means upfront, direct, challenging – stimulating people’s outrage that poverty is allowed to exist in a rich world. Optimism means offering people a sense that they can do something about it; that campaigning does change politicians’ behaviour, that disaster response makes a difference, that Oxfam’s long-term projects do help poor people get themselves out of poverty. Optimism is also about the message that individual actions matter, whether it’s giving a fiver to the collection box, signing a petition or organising a fund-raiser.

Here’s an example: climate change is a long way off, isn’t it? Yeah, about 4,000 miles. Take action or donate now.

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