Turning Giving into a Cartoon
Over the weekend, Facebook turned into a sea of animation as person after person changed their profile picture to a cartoon character from their youth, to ‘raise awareness of child abuse.’ Well, congratulations Facebookers, all those pictures of Thundercats have completely eradicated child abuse issues the world over! How about next week, we tackle world hunger? Am I being a little harsh? Pardon me, I just fail to see what any of this does to raise awareness about anything.
When you changed your picture to a cartoon character, did you light a candle and say a prayer for a child who’s being abused? Probably not. Did you put your hand in your pocket and donate to a children’s charity? Probably not. But I bet you and your friends reminisced over the wonders of He Man and She-Ra like there was no tomorrow.
It’s the same when I get these messages on Facebook telling me to change my status to the colour of the bra I’m wearing to ‘raise awareness’ about breast cancer, ‘but don’t tell the boys!’ So I’m supposed to raise awareness by not telling half the population what the hell I’m talking about? Hmm, bit of a dead end. So, you change your status to your bra colour, great. Did you do a breast exam? Did you tell your friends to check themselves? Did you book a mammogram? And isn’t not telling the boys a bit counterproductive? Wouldn’t they like to know what to do if they found a lump in their girlfriend’s breast or their own (because it can happen to them too)?
We live in an age of armchair activism. Social media has given us the ability to spout the most while doing the least. Wait, I can change the world by doing a status update and I don’t have to actually get off my ass and do anything? Perfect! It gives people the illusion that you care. I understand that’s not the case for everyone but the reality is that the vast majority of people who changed their profile pictures to cartoon characters, most likely did not donate to a children’s charity or take any steps to make children safer in their community.
If you want to make a difference, you donate your time or money to your chosen cause. Not everyone wants to scream their efforts from the rooftop but since I imagine most of the comments on this post will be along the lines of ‘well what have you done?’ here goes: I’m organising 20 girls to run the Paris Half Marathon in aid of Refuge, a charity who help women and children escape domestic violence. I’ve been training for it since the beginning of November and whenever I go on a training run, I’m thinking about the goal of raising £10K. I bought hats, scarves, gloves and toiletries for the women at my local homeless shelter because I figure they could use a few of the creature comforts I take for granted. I made sure that all the Christmas cards I bought were from charities. I won’t go into what’s going on in my personal life, suffice to say, financial insecurity is playing a large part right now, but I’m doing the little I can to make a difference, however small.
I tweet out the link to my running team’s Just Giving page and people retweet it or ‘like’ it on Facebook but are yet to donate a penny to it. Retweeting and ‘liking’ makes them feel as if they’ve done their bit. Don’t get me wrong, I truly do appreciate it, but what does a Retweet translate into for a woman trying to get away from a husband who beats her? Pass the buck in the hopes that someone else will part with their money so you don’t have to?
However bad you have it, someone has it worse. Your time or money will always mean more to a charity than jumping on a bandwagon and taking ‘profile picture action.’
that justgiving pages has raised almost £4500 already and a lot of people have changed their status and included the link to donate to the nspcc.
