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skeptical third world child (Heena Pranav and ?)
heena now
origin
Heena Pranav is a doctor who lives in Chicago. Back in 2012 she was a medical student and she'd travelled to Gulu, a city in northern Uganda, to help an aid project for women traumatised by the country's war with the Lords Resistance Army. The project was run by Pros for Africa, a charity headed by a Catholic nun, Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe.
The child in the photo wasn't connected to the aid project - Pranav says she met him at a local market and guessed he was about two or three years old.
"I was with a group of other medical students at the time, we were walking around and I saw this little boy, he seemed really sweet," Pranav told BBC Trending radio. "His mom was nearby working in the market. I went up to him to play with him and say 'hi'… he was the most animated child I've ever met."
The boy didn't speak English, and Pranav doesn't speak the local languages (which include Luo, Swahili and others), but their brief encounter was captured on camera by another member of the group. Pranav says she hadn't even heard of Reddit before her friend posted it on the message board and it went viral.
"I can't imagine this would have happened," she said. "I wished the kid and his mom could have known about it and somehow benefited from it, because I do think he was exploited in the process."
Her misgivings are shared by others working in the aid field. Martine Jahre is vice president of Students and Academics International Assistance Fund, a Norwegian NGO which is famous for making viral videos that make fun of the way charities campaign for aid to Africa, often using poor-looking children in advertisements.
"It's difficult for us to be the moral police and say that's not very funny," she says. "But I think people need to think more about what they're sharing and the messages that it gives.
"You wouldn't like it if your own kid became a meme that people made fun of all over the world. It really says a lot about how we think of 'us' and 'them'."
But the picture has also been deployed in different ways - with some Africans themselves using it to criticise Western ideas of their continent.
"It's dangerous to tell a single story about the African continent but also about development in general," Jahre says. "Our media shape our view of the world on a daily basis, but positive developments happen over time, and aren't nearly as sexy to write about as crisis as war. When you only hear about Africa as hunger, war, diseases, HIV and AIDS, you really become apathetic."
heena now
origin
Heena Pranav is a doctor who lives in Chicago. Back in 2012 she was a medical student and she'd travelled to Gulu, a city in northern Uganda, to help an aid project for women traumatised by the country's war with the Lords Resistance Army. The project was run by Pros for Africa, a charity headed by a Catholic nun, Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe.
The child in the photo wasn't connected to the aid project - Pranav says she met him at a local market and guessed he was about two or three years old.
"I was with a group of other medical students at the time, we were walking around and I saw this little boy, he seemed really sweet," Pranav told BBC Trending radio. "His mom was nearby working in the market. I went up to him to play with him and say 'hi'… he was the most animated child I've ever met."
The boy didn't speak English, and Pranav doesn't speak the local languages (which include Luo, Swahili and others), but their brief encounter was captured on camera by another member of the group. Pranav says she hadn't even heard of Reddit before her friend posted it on the message board and it went viral.
"I can't imagine this would have happened," she said. "I wished the kid and his mom could have known about it and somehow benefited from it, because I do think he was exploited in the process."
Her misgivings are shared by others working in the aid field. Martine Jahre is vice president of Students and Academics International Assistance Fund, a Norwegian NGO which is famous for making viral videos that make fun of the way charities campaign for aid to Africa, often using poor-looking children in advertisements.
"It's difficult for us to be the moral police and say that's not very funny," she says. "But I think people need to think more about what they're sharing and the messages that it gives.
"You wouldn't like it if your own kid became a meme that people made fun of all over the world. It really says a lot about how we think of 'us' and 'them'."
But the picture has also been deployed in different ways - with some Africans themselves using it to criticise Western ideas of their continent.
"It's dangerous to tell a single story about the African continent but also about development in general," Jahre says. "Our media shape our view of the world on a daily basis, but positive developments happen over time, and aren't nearly as sexy to write about as crisis as war. When you only hear about Africa as hunger, war, diseases, HIV and AIDS, you really become apathetic."
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