Corporate band-aid

How to buy your conscience

MATT SCHELLENBERG

With social awareness becoming more trendy each year, it is becoming difficult to discern the motives of the many charitable organizations popping up everywhere. Back in the day if I wanted to feel good about myself I just had to pick up my telephone and call UNICEF. Now I am confronted by seemingly well-meaning consumer-comforting charities at every corner.

Yesterday, after purchasing a Gap ProductRed sweater, I proceeded to Starbucks for a fair-trade coffee. I ended my day at the grocery store, picking up McCain Superfries, which helped support the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Yesterday, I got all the stuff I wanted, and had conveniently supported three separate causes along the way.

Seems like a win-win situation. Canadian companies made money, the poor and diseased got help. And I, the satisfied consumer, sat warm and well-fed in my comfortable, conscience-pleasing sweater. The problem is, I can’t help but feel sort of sleazy.

But why? Look at Livestrong bracelets — rubber wristbands supporting cancer research endorsed by Lance Armstrong. This well-intentioned and successful money-raising tool has become a status symbol. The Livestrong bracelet wearer can silently proclaim a loud, yellow “Look at me, I support a cause!”

One might feel odd wearing one’s one dollar donation receipt from the Salvation Army around one’s neck. So, the Livestrong bracelet makes the sign of the donation fashionable. It makes cancer research cool, even trendy.

Must I be so cynical? Ever since the sixties, people in North America have been working to push social issues into mainstream culture. And maybe they’re finally making some progress.

Through these attractive means, Livestrong bracelets got 50 million people to donate to a cause they may not have otherwise donated to. The average 14-year-old Gap-shopper may have never considered donating to charity, and now they have an accessible avenue to do so. McCain Superfries are just as tasty as when I bought them before, but now breast cancer research will have more funding — with this, I cannot find fault. But still I wonder, what are we encouraging?

We encourage a method of charity that provides an outlet for bandwagon-jumpers to continue to consume. In some cases they are uneducated about the cause they support, in others, perhaps oblivious to the fact they are supporting a cause at all. Perhaps this model does provide a winning situation for profit-driven companies and do-gooder charities. But as a society of consumers, we are unmoved.

This model subtly encourages us not to worry too much about where our money goes. It says, “Just continue to live the life you want and we’ll sell you a sweater (or coffee, or a french fry) that can make you feel better about yourself.”

So buy those McCain Superfries. Put on your ProductRed sweater. Taste the fairness of your coffee. It’s alright to feel good about the cause you’re supporting. But don’t stop there.

This is only the beginning; a stepping stone for our society to become actively aware of social issues. The trend will pass as fast as those jeans that look like you sat down in a sand-box if we don’t force these issues to become more than a trendy bracelet around our wrists. What are the rest of the stepping stones? I don’t know exactly. But as long as we allow our charity to exist only within our consumer driven mindset, we are destined to see this current flutter of social awareness as only a comfortable Band-Aid for a much larger wound.