Perhaps the virtue ethicist part of you may feel partly assuaged by GiveDirectly’s blog post about the project? I’m thinking in particular of these sections (warning—long quotes):
GiveDirectly confirmed recipients and communities want to be featured, as always:
For all media projects, we first consult with village leadership to confirm their interest and consent for participating. For this video, we also met with local and national government officials to confirm if they were supportive of such a large spotlight.
Journalists and content creators always follow this guidance when visiting GiveDirectly programs. Profiled recipients first give informed consent before sharing their story. You can read our consent forms here→
Beast Philanthropy centered the local culture:
They regularly solicited input from our local staff about whether approaches and portrayals would be received well by the community and had us give notes on the video edit.
They focused on English-speakers so recipients could share more of their story in their own voice.
They worked to capture the cultural specificity of the community, forgoing stock music for natural sounds→
After filming, GiveDirectly’s safeguarding team interviewed 9 of the filmed recipients. You can read their feedback here – some highlights:
Recipients enjoyed being on camera.
“The way they came and interacted with me and my family, that’s what I liked most. I felt in place and free with them.”
“I was very happy and I welcomed them. I showed them my land agreement together with the land, iron sheets (for my new roof) and some household materials.”
Their motivations for participating varied.
“I did accept to participate because of the challenges and poverty that my community members are facing. I needed to represent their views.”
“I needed to tell how happy I felt and also to show the rest of the community members that when given something small or large you can always use it in a way that can help raise your standard of living.”
Two gave us actionable feedback for how we can improve next time.
“I was relaxed and very happy, though my husband got anxious about the number of GiveDirectly staff who visited us.”
“I felt good about it, though I feel I should also be shown the photos and videos to watch.”
Later this month, we’ll screen the video for the featured community dubbed into Nga’Karimojong (their language), followed by a focus group discussion, then update this blog with their thoughts on the final video.
This was to me a surprising amount of beneficiary thoughtfulness for a MrBeast video (admittedly I don’t watch his content often), albeit in line with my expectations for GiveDirectly.
Perhaps the virtue ethicist part of you may feel partly assuaged by GiveDirectly’s blog post about the project? I’m thinking in particular of these sections (warning—long quotes):
This was to me a surprising amount of beneficiary thoughtfulness for a MrBeast video (admittedly I don’t watch his content often), albeit in line with my expectations for GiveDirectly.