Oxfam's efforts not down the drain

This is a response to the criticism of the World’s Longest Toilet Queue (WLTQ) published in last week’s Muse. While MUN Oxfam strongly supports the letter’s underlying theme of ensuring motivations and actions are focused on impact for developing communities, overall we feel it contained many mistaken assumptions and ignored what we intended the event to be about.

Firstly, it must be noted that Oxfam Canada supports community-led development work in 28 countries. MUN Oxfam supports this work through fundraising. Sanitation is not just an issue we speak up about through events such as the WLTQ. It is a challenge that Oxfam works on every day with women and men in developing communities around the world. Connecting the public with that work is crucially important. This is what the WLTQ was about.

Secondly, helping developing communities achieve their own basic rights is not just an on-the-ground effort. It requires change to the global economic and political conditions that perpetuate poverty and injustice. That change requires political action. MUN Oxfam helps motivate that action by rallying the public and adding our voice to global challenges to world leaders. This is what the WLTQ was about.

Through these political actions MUN Oxfam, can have impact both globally and in our own back yard. Our campaigns for recognition of the human right to water or global action on climate change are other examples. At the same time, we are unapologetic about ultimately striving to help developing communities in the global south. As individuals, we volunteer for a variety of local causes. However, as an organization, we believe we can maximize our impact by focusing resources to help the world’s most vulnerable people. This is what the WLTQ was about.

Finally, I wish to directly challenge the author’s personal attacks on our volunteers as “[selfish], [stupid]… immature, and seeking… to advance personal agendas.” This does not in any way reflect what I know of various volunteers who have: Changed lifestyles to be part of the solution to climate change; volunteered to give up their titles/responsibilities to others they felt could have greater impact; failed midterms while working too hard on advocacy projects for Oxfam; lost sleep, shed tears and sacrificed personal health in their efforts to have a positive global impact.

That is what the WLTQ was about. For more, or to continue this discussion, visit www.munoxfam.com/toilet.

Daniel Miller, co-director of MUN Oxfam