Oh my!! The world has gone ice
crazy.
I have been watching videos on
facebook of my old school friends, new friends, young people, old people and
celebrities tipping icy water over their heads and laughing with glee at their
discomfort. I have also donated to MND. I have, therefore, had the pleasure of
both schadenfreude and giving – the awesome musical Avenue Q has songs about
both of these which can be accessed by clicking on the links.
I have also read with bafflement
the proliferation of anti-ice bucket challenge stuff that has been posted and
so I feel the need stick my two penn’orth in to the debate.
There seem to be two main
arguments against the ALS ice bucket challenge
Yes. It is appalling that while we
pour bucket loads of the stuff over our heads there are many parts of the world
where water is a precious commodity and clean, fresh water almost unheard of.
However, we waste water every day in the first world – showering, bathing and
flushing toilets, watering gardens, washing cars, doing laundry.
When I was at school we had two
dinner ladies (playground supervisors) who could have been the inspiration for
Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach. These power crazed hags took it in turn to supervise
the pig bin and on Mondays (salad days but not in the good way) I would spend
my entire lunch hour presenting my plate in a twisted parody of Oliver Twist
“Please,
miss I DON’T want any more”
I would be sent back to the table, where I would hide
the pickled beetroot and coleslaw under the lumpy mash in the hope that this
would fool Aunt Sponge or Spiker into thinking I’d eaten something else.
It didn’t.
Inevitably
I would be told that there were children in Africa who would be grateful for
this food and as I forced down another couple of mouthfuls, trying not to gag,
I wished I could stick the whole vile plate in the post.
I couldn’t do that then any more
than we can send our buckets of iced water to those who need it so desperately.
What we can do is use that water to raise money and awareness.
It
is an unnecessarily showy way of raising money
Yes, it is a showy way of raising
money but why is that a bad thing. Someone who doesn’t appear to have a name,
has blogged about this saying
“We live in a real ‘look at me’ culture with
anyone able to post on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, hash tagging for
followers, soliciting for likes and comments.”
Absolutely, (and blogging is part of that look
at me culture, by the way, anonymous blogger) but isn’t it good that instead of
endless posts of cute cats and what’s for dinner social media is actually doing
some good?
This Australian news anchor makes some good
points. Yes we should all give to charity regularly and there are many out
there to choose from but I strongly suspect that many of the folk I’ve watched
getting iced don’t have an account with the Charities Aid Foundation or even
put money in street collection tins. They are, however, making their £3
donations through their mobiles.
He also informs us that “more than $30million
has been raised for ALS (which is what the Americans call Motor Neuron Disease
MND) I for one can say with a fair degree of certainty that this is the first
time I have donated to MND and yet I have given to cancer charities, the
British Heart Foundation, Alzheimers, HIV, animal charities, both domestic and
wild, children, Africa many times each.
This infographic is meant to make us rethink
where we should be focusing our giving, but heart disease and respiratory
illness are largely the result of unhealthy lifestyle choices ALS/MND is not.
Please watch this video all the way through. I
know he gets a bit tedious acting the fool in the first part but the second
part is worth waiting for.
So to the people who have been pouring cold
water on a brilliantly conceived fundraising initiative I challenge you to give
something to any charity you like. You have 24 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment