Evidence of more than three decades of humanitarian communication by Firdaus Kharas

For more than three decades, Firdaus Kharas has demonstrated how one person’s sustained commitment can expand humanity’s ability to protect life and uphold human dignity. He developed a means of communication that crosses boundaries of language, culture, ethnicity, geography and literacy, and made his humanitarian work freely available to everybody and anybody. Its reach, breadth, international adoption and endurance constitute a historical achievement: humanitarian knowledge and shared human values carried to people in nearly every part of the world to improve the human condition.

Through Chocolate Moose Media, Kharas has created more than 5,300 productions and episodes addressing some 115 subjects, adapted for audiences in hundreds of languages and local forms, with documented or reported use in 198 countries and territories. The historical record includes broadcast agreements, institutional commissions, independent assessments, parliamentary recognition, published reports, researched articles and numerous accounts from people using the material in far-flung communities. The numbers describe its scale; the larger contribution lies in what those communications have enabled people to learn and choose. Kharas never preached; he brought people to their own understanding of the value of life.

A lasting resource for human well-being

A person who understands how to avoid infection, a family that reconsiders a harmful practice, an educator able to discuss equality, a survivor of violence receiving empathy, and a community that recognizes human dignity: each represents a practical possibility created when essential communication reaches people in a form they can trust and understand. Across disease prevention, children’s rights, gender equality, human rights, protection from violence, cultural acceptance and peaceful coexistence, Kharas has helped make an incalculable number of such conversations possible.

Broadcasters gave airtime, humanitarian agencies commissioned and distributed work, community groups held screenings, and local specialists adapted messages to familiar voices and settings. Free access to humanitarian productions allowed organizations and individuals with modest or no resources to use the same communications as major international institutions.

Evidence of international adoption and influence

The evidence is extensive: published quotes, reports and articles, institutional records, awards and independent assessments, broadcast and distribution records, and testimony from institutions and people who used the work. Messages about health and safety reached large public audiences; stories grounded in African traditions found international television distribution; Arabic-language children’s vignettes introduced respect for differences and equality through values-based narratives; and work with refugees and survivors of violence supplied local advocates with ways to begin difficult conversations. Together, these efforts advanced physical well-being and the recognition of equal human worth.

The Peabody Awards commended one global prevention effort for its “deceptively lighthearted and extremely effective attack on a deadly world epidemic.” A Senator publicly acknowledged Kharas’ international contribution in the Senate of Canada. The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, repeatedly praised the ability of Kharas’s prevention messages to cross cultural boundaries and encouraged their use. The director of the United Nations Outreach Division expressed gratitude for Kharas’ work in advancing humanitarian goals. These are part of a much larger record of independent recognition accumulated over three decades.

Courage, judgment and the struggle to be heard

The undertaking demanded imagination, resources and resolve. Kharas navigated financial constraints, language adaptation, broadcast negotiations, objections from religious and political authorities and, at times, personal danger. He received direct death threats by email and telephone, including threats of beheading. He discussed receiving threats publicly in Randy Kelly’s documentary The Animated Activist, (at 22:43).

Local partners also faced risks, including threats against people using communications on sexual and domestic violence and against women working to reduce the stigma surrounding rape. In a violence-reduction project involving teenagers in a country affected by the cocaine trade, wording was changed after threats against young voice performers. Material featuring women from conflict-affected areas was modified or withdrawn to protect participants. In Ebola-affected communities in the DRCongo, insecurity and attacks on health workers made the delivery of prevention messages very difficult.

These experiences demanded persistence, sound judgment and paramount respect for the safety of those carrying the work into communities. Kharas and his collaborators continued their humanitarian efforts, adapting their approach when circumstances required it. The work never stopped.

What can be concluded

The strongest evidence of this contribution is cumulative: decades of activity, thousands of productions addressing diverse human concerns, extensive language adaptation, repeated adoption by institutions and broadcasters, independent public recognition and testimony of local use. Assessments by observers, including deeply researched articles and papers, have credited the work with helping save many lives.

A precise global count of lives protected, attitudes changed and harmful decisions averted cannot be established from freely distributed work used across so many countries and years. Open, multichannel distribution makes comprehensive measurement exceptionally difficult. The accumulated evidence, however, documents the delivery of relevant information to people at risk in accessible languages and formats, along with substantial records of use, redistribution, audience responses and reported changes in understanding and behaviour.

Kharas’ legacy offers an example of how moral purpose, creative skill, personal courage and extraordinary persistence can be organized into a durable public good. Each new audience reached offers another person the opportunity to prevent harm, respect a neighbour, protect a child or act with compassion. Across more than three decades, that possibility has been offered again and again, across borders and generations.

The enduring achievement is a new capacity to reach people with messages of life, dignity and common humanity, sustained through the determination to place that capacity directly into the hands of individuals. As an African journalist wrote, “the efforts of humanitarian media producer Firdaus Kharas restore a little faith in humanity.”