* Disclaimer: I did not write this to shame anyone who
already has or still wishes to participate in the ALS Bucket Challenge, nor did
I write it to offend and/or hurt anybody living with or otherwise affected by ALS.
I wrote it to open up a dialogue about philanthropic attitudes (or lack there
of) here in the United States, to offer my perspective on said attitudes, and
because I’m curious as to the perspectives of others on this issue, so please feel free to
fire away in the comments section and thank you in advance for reading with an
open mind :)
1. Water
No, not because California’s
experiencing an epic drought — which is so bad it’s literally making the Earth's surface rise, btw — but because the ALS Bucket Challenge has so far resulted
in the combined waste of more than 6 MILLION GALLONS of presumably drinkable
water to raise money/awareness for the approximately 30,000 people living with
ALS in the United States at any given time . . .
Now, 30,000 is a big number.
I’m not saying it’s not, nor am I saying that what those individuals and those
close to them go through isn’t utterly gut-wrenching. What I am asking you,
though, is to imagine trying to explain the concept of the challenge to any one
of the 5,000 children who die A DAY due to lack of clean drinking water in
sub-Saharan African countries ALONE.
(That’s roughly 2 million
deaths per year, just to put that number into multiple perspectives.)
And here’s the real kicker:
We don’t need to do any
research to save those lives. We just need to give a sh*t.
2. Faux Altruism
You know exactly which people on your newsfeed I’m talking about.
I have a few of them on mine
too, and subsequently thought long and hard about whether or not to even
include this as a reason because the last thing those people need is more
attention.
3. “Awareness” & The Fund Vaccum
While the exact origins of
the ice bucket challenge differ depending on where you’re getting your
information, earlier versions of the rules seemed to mean for donations to be “paid
forward” in that challenge-ees who failed were to donate to a charity of their
challenger’s choice, whereas those who succeeded were free to donate to one of
their own choosing before challenging others and so on, the idea being that
awarenesses were “exchanged” and as many charities as possible got a piece of the
pie.
It didn’t become the ALS
Bucket Challenge until the ALS Association recycled and re-marketed this strategy, and whether or not the rules were intentionally muddled to
specifically benefit ALS or if that part of the rules was simply lost in the
process of the challenge going viral — like in a game of telephone — it’s not only
effectively preventing other charities from riding the fund wave, but possibly
even diverting regular donations away from them, which begs the question:
With donations nearing $80
million dollars, at what point should ALS have to pass the torch?
When does it officially lose
its underdog status?
For while it’s impossible to
quantify the worth of certain such causes, it’s important to remember that there
are still plenty of them out there that need our time, money, and awareness
just as much as ALS once did — if not more so now because of the challenge.
This guy pretty much nails it.
4) The ALS Association Funds Animal Testing
Entirely putting aside that
this could not be more out of line with my personal beliefs as an animal lover,
statistically it’s a poor use of donations. Pamela Anderson was the first celebrity
to bring this to the public’s attention in regards to the ALS Bucket Challenge via her Facebook page, and while she’s admittedly not the best source, after doing some
research of my own it’s hard to disagree with her argument:
“According to the FDA, 92 out of every 100 drugs that
pass animal trials fail during the human clinical trial phase. Sophisticated
non-animal testing methods — including in vitro methods, advanced
computer-modeling techniques, and studies with human volunteers, among others —
have given us everything from the best life-saving HIV drugs to cloned human
skin for burn victims. Trying to cure human diseases by relying on outdated and
ineffective animal experiments isn’t only cruel — it’s a grave disservice to
people who desperately need cures.”
5. I already donate/educate/volunteer, and no one had to challenge me to do it
Not only is it annoying to be
publicly challenged to do something I’ve already been doing minus the YouTube
video, frankly it’s somewhat “icky” to me that we need to be more or less peer-pressuring
each other into helping out our fellow human beings (to say nothing of
endangered species, our rain forests, the oceans, you know, the planet in
general).
And believe me, I get that no
one wants to be “that person” who brings the conversation down by bringing up
all the terrible things happening all over the world every single day and why we
need to care about them. I get that we all only have so much time, money,
and/or energy, and that sometimes while caught up in the teeny-tiny whirlwind of
our own lives it genuinely goes over our heads that we can make a
difference . . .
BUT WE CAN.
The ALS Bucket Challenge has
shown us that.
The thing is, we are 100% capable of donating,
educating, and/or volunteering 100% of the time, and what would be even cooler than dumping buckets of
perfectly good ice water over our heads is if we lived our lives that way a
little more often, and not only when it’s trending.
XO, Mal
* Author’s Note: In lieu of the ALS Association I’ll be
splitting my donation between the San Diego Humane Society & SPCA (where I rescued my
dog) and Charity: Water as well as looking into additional upcoming
volunteer opportunities with Warrior Foundation ~ Freedom Station here in San Diego.
