Starve magazine is an online blog that satirizes western views about the humanitarian refugee crisis in east Africa. After a year of work, we are launching the creative brands of Dusoma Ltd (known as the Dusoma Brand). Taza Impact is our creative engine: filmmaking, fashion, and fiction used to give visibility to beautiful queer people who fight for human rights.
We examine the clichés that breed apathy and burnout on social media, and instead spotlight Shalom’s network of queer refugees across East Africa who are doing non-gender conforming fashion runway shows in both refugee camps and Denver, CO. We also write sharp satirical content to spotlight funding problems – grants that are slow to adapt to the current funding crisis. We write about well-meaning aid designed without the people it’s meant to serve: solar wells that fail in rainy season; grants for fancy cameras where food is needed; “endangered language” money that enriches academics but never reaches the speakers. We’ve watched studies get millions while the subjects get nothing. It’s time to use technology and creative thinking to change all this.
This project grew from Chicago Art Magazine, where we asked why culture thinks artists shouldn’t be paid. Now, a decade later, we push that question wider—why are so many told to work for love while others profit? Why are communities told they’re “rich in spirit” when what they need is cash, clinics, and clean water? Why are people who are starving asked to serve as volunteers for $145 million foundations?
We’re living through a time when potable water is scarce and problems are arising here in the US in ways that most people are totally unaware of. The stories we’re told divide us; that makes it easier to take everything that’s left. Through art and storytelling, Starve Magazine aims to cut through the noise—sharp, human, and unflinching—so help can land where it’s needed most – and that’s often to refugee’s digital wallets.