While scrolling through my feed on Facebook, in between the new profile pictures and funny cat videos, I saw a campaign advertisement that one of my friends had shared. I honestly almost kept scrolling past it because it didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary, but at second glance I realized just how wrong I was.

Yes, I thought that this was, yet another, model promoting, yet another, random handbag line. That is, until I realized the powerful message behind the image.

Cordaid is an international development organization based in the Netherlands that creates unique advertisements like the one above to bring awareness to poverty in struggling countries.

Their advertisements are successful because they make you aware of the problem by connecting you to the situation on an emotional level. I am guilty, as I’m sure many women are, of buying an overpriced handbag because it matched a pair of shoes perfectly. I never really stopped to think about everything that I take for granted, and this is exactly what this advertisement is making you do. The very skinny woman in the picture wearing old clothes with an undeveloped area in the background makes the purse seem so frivolously unnecessary. This woman is concerned about feeding her family and just wants to make it through another day, and here we are spending insane amounts of money for designer purses. Bringing out the feeling of guilt is definitely a strategy that Cordaid realizes is effective.

This provides a sense of civic duty, because if you are someone who can afford to buy a purse for hundreds of dollars, you can afford to spend your money to improve the lives of others who are less fortunate.

It really highlights the ideology that “Americans are materialistic” and makes you feel as though you can change this if you spend your money helping those in need, instead of the millionaires who own the successful line of handbags. This truly makes you stop and think, which is exactly why it is successful in its goal.