Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Let's face it, when it first be­gan it was fun. Celebri­ties in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­can sprin­kled star­dust on a wor­thy cause by dump­ing buck­ets of ice wa­ter on their heads in sup­port ALS re­search.ALS, al­so known as Lou Gehrig's dis­ease is a pro­gres­sive neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­der which se­vere­ly com­pro­mis­es nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

There is nei­ther treat­ment nor cure for this ail­ment that slow­ly robs the vic­tim of life. The best that med­i­cine can of­fer is ther­a­py to man­age the as­so­ci­at­ed com­pli­ca­tions.Feel­ing down af­ter hav­ing read that? Well this is pre­cise­ly why the "ice buck­et chal­lenge" was so ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly ef­fec­tive. ALS can be heavy sub­ject to di­gest. If in­di­vid­u­als aren't di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by this fa­tal dis­ease they'd just as soon not bur­den them­selves with wor­ry about it.

Dump­ing a buck­et of ice wa­ter on­to your head is a play­ful­ly stu­pid way of show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with suf­fer­ers of this ter­mi­nal con­di­tion and ad­vo­cat­ing in­creased aware­ness and fund-rais­ing for re­search.

The way it is (or was, it seems the craze has pe­tered out) sup­posed to work is a chal­lenge is is­sued to some­one to take the icy bath, if the chal­lenge is not ful­filled with­in 24 hours the "nom­i­nee" must then make a char­i­ta­ble do­na­tion in the name of ALS. If the chal­lenge is ac­cept­ed, the suf­fi­cient­ly chilled par­tic­i­pant pass­es it on to oth­er friends or rel­a­tives.

Well the trend went vi­ral. Videos of Hol­ly­wood celebri­ties de­scend­ing from Olym­pus to par­take in a de­cid­ed­ly "hu­man" ac­tiv­i­ty trig­gered the un­washed mass­es (now ice-washed) to pass the ba­ton.

For every video, there was cor­re­spond­ing crit­i­cism. Many peo­ple opined that it was dread­ful to be wast­ing so much wa­ter giv­en the drought in Cal­i­for­nia and the scarci­ty of this pre­cious re­source on the African con­ti­nent. It is un­like­ly that a cou­ple thou­sand buck­ets of wa­ter would re­al­ly have made much dif­fer­ence to Cal­i­for­nia's bur­geon­ing dust-bowl fu­ture.That ice wa­ter, had it not been wast­ed, wouldn't have been re rout­ed to Africa to slake the thirsts of parched Bedouin in the Sa­hel.

Crit­i­cisms aside, the cam­paign has been ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly suc­cess­ful. In fact, the ALS as­so­ci­a­tion in the Unit­ed States has a pe­cu­liar prob­lem; they aren't quite sure what to do with the 100 mil­lion dol­lars raised so far.As the in­ter­web craze spread, it was on­ly a mat­ter of time that Tri­nis would find them­selves do­ing what is a par­tic­u­lar spe­cial­ty of ours, mim­ic­ry.

It be­gan first with our own pseu­do celebri­ties tak­ing up the chal­lenge and then or­di­nary folks fol­low­ing, as they are wont to do, to "raise aware­ness" for ALS. Thus be­gan fren­zied on­line trawl­ing for "likes" and oth­er vir­tu­al ac­knowl­edge­ments.

The lo­cal leg of the cam­paign be­gan to sour (at least in my mind) very rapid­ly when some ma­jor com­pa­nies saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty for free pub­lic re­la­tions and jumped right in. Some of them would have done well to douse their heads with buck­ets of shame, giv­en the pal­try sup­port (if any at all) they have be­grudg­ing­ly be­stowed on peren­ni­al­ly cap-in-hand NGOs.

Sud­den­ly every­one in Trinidad want­ed to sup­port ALS re­search, even though just one month ago, I sus­pect very few peo­ple had ever heard of it. So­ca­son­ian Bun­ji Gar­lin was ex­co­ri­at­ed on­line for "throw­ing shade" on ice buck­et poseurs. Mr Gar­lin ques­tioned how many Tri­nis were ac­tu­al­ly do­nat­ing to the cause adding that "no one could tell him where to go and do­nate."

This ig­nit­ed moral out­rage, fu­elled by a high­ly com­bustible ig­no­rance of what he was sug­gest­ing. The per­former wasn't say­ing he wouldn't do­nate be­cause he knows noth­ing about the cause, he was sim­ply sug­gest­ing that many cit­i­zens are caught up in a fad and have no re­al in­ter­est in it.

It is a point that can­not be ig­nored; a few years ago a well known lo­cal per­son­al­i­ty be­gan a high­ly pub­li­cised fund-rais­ing dri­ve. This ini­tia­tive at­tract­ed pledges of sup­port amount­ing to al­most half a mil­lion dol­lars. When the glit­ter of the pub­lic cam­paign set­tled, very few of those pledges were ho­n­oured. Sev­er­al well-es­tab­lished com­pa­nies used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to build pub­lic re­la­tions cap­i­tal with­out ac­tu­al­ly con­tribut­ing a cent to the cause.

Tri­ni band­wag­gonists know all too well that if you can ap­pear to be do­ing some­thing char­i­ta­ble that's good enough.It was en­cour­ag­ing to see at least a few peo­ple adapt­ing the ice buck­et chal­lenge to a lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Down Syn­drome Fam­i­ly Net­work. It would be in­ter­est­ing to see how that trans­lat­ed in­to dol­lars and cents.There are count­less groups out there; Rain­bow Res­cue, The Autis­tic So­ci­ety of T&T, The Can­cer So­ci­ety all of which need con­stant, year-round sup­port.

These are just a few of the or­gan­i­sa­tions which could ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from the sort of pas­sion and ap­par­ent mag­na­nim­i­ty en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly dis­played over the past month by Tri­nis in re­sponse to an im­port­ed vi­ral cam­paign.Dump­ing buck­ets and pots of ice wa­ter on your heads for ALS re­search can be well in­ten­tioned. Equal­ly im­por­tant are all of the poor­ly fund­ed as­so­ci­a­tions here at home who don't even have a pot to...well you get the point.