The Power of Small Numbers
Since returning from my trip across Europe to a Serbian refugee camp I have re-awakening some albeit dormant knowledge from my time spent studying politics at the University of Glasgow and have been reading and chatting with a lot of people about the refugee crisis.
The one thing I’ve noticed when speaking with anyone in NGO’s or political institutions about the European refugee crisis?
They all lead with the big numbers.
The first paragraph of a recent post by International Rescue Committee (my emphasis):
A daunting humanitarian crisis has gripped the world: 2015 draws to a close with the news that one million refugees and migrants from countries like Syria and Iraq that are experiencing relentless conflicts have fled to Europe for safety and a new start.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can understand it. Though the problem is that it is limited in its effectiveness as means of communicating for real action. Shock maybe but action, that’s hard.
Why?
It’s too overwhelming. As humans we are simply not wired to be able to comprehend large numbers. It doesn’t have to be as many as a million. Once you start getting above a couple of hundred it all starts to become a little too abstract.
Indulge me while I bastardise a quote by Stalin using dots to make a point.
21,276 dots are a
It becomes hard to focus in on any one of the dots.
35 are a…
Why did I pick 35 dots?
My wife and I recently signed a petition to urge the Justice Minister here in Ireland to take action to o stand by her statement about prioritising unaccompanied refugee children. This request wasn’t an abstract, intellectual request. We’re talking about 35 children that the Director of the Greek Asylum Service tweeted there was no room for.
35 children, there are primary classes here in Ireland that size. That we can relate to.
We received a generic response telling us that the Irish government are willing to accept 4 children at the moment with the obligatory suggestion that this number may be increased in the future.
This was enough for us to contact TUSLA the agency responsible to find out how we could personally help. It is easy to understand how countries and institutions can struggle with millions of people but when it comes down to individual people, and
It’s not that we shouldn’t mention the big numbers, we just need to zoom in and zoom out keeping the individuals in mind while keeping the greater situation in context.
And yes I did count all the dots:
