When I was in grade school, regardless of whether our Trick-or-Treat costumes were home-made or store-bought, whether we wore masks or make-up, our huge paper loot bags were accompanied by small orange milk cartons stamped with information from UNICEF -- The United Nations Children's Fund. Printed on the cartons were examples of what a small donation might do for a child in a third-world country -- a nickel, for example, might provide a child with a pencil and notebook for school; a dollar might vaccinate him against smallpox or polio; five dollars could get his town clean water. The following school day, our teachers would collect the milk containers. The local PTA would count up the money and submit the school's UNICEF donation for that year.
I'm not sure when our school district stopped Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF -- or why. Until I went looking for its history for this post, I had thought the entire program had been discontinued.
One of the keys to the success of Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is that it depends on small contributions from many contributors, rather than larger contributions from fewer donors, or huge grants from foundations. Another is that it gives the individual contributor, and the child collector, the feeling that their small contributions are doing something concrete towards the alleviation of suffering in the world. A third relies on our protective, parental instincts towards children in general. And finally, we were required by our schools to bring Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF to our neighborhood ventures.
For many of us, this was our earliest exposure to fundraising in general, and crowdsourced fundraising in particular. While there were pushkes (charity boxes) in front of the cash registers at the Kosher bakery, butcher, and deli, those depended on the mutual understanding that patrons would deposit some or all of the change from their purchases in these canisters. The first time I saw anything remotely similar in a non-Jewish establishment was sometime in the 1970's. It was a stand-up quarter-holder for either Muscular Dystrophy or one of the leukemia foundations. Those stand-ups were soon joined by round canisters for the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association, and a multitude of other stand-ups, round and rectangular canisters, and charity boxes, proliferating to the point that it was hard to see the clerk behind the register.
Many of those collection boxes have since disappeared, replaced by displays of small-item impulse purchases. (I'll refrain from commenting about this as a reflection upon society in general.) The one big exception that comes to mind is the Ronald McDonald House charity boxes. Instead, many charities depend on larger contributions solicited through mass mailings, phone calls, and television appeals. Crowdsourced low-contribution fundraising has moved into charity walks, runs, and bicycle tours. For those of us interested in diabetes-related charities, these are the JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes and the ADA's Step Out: Walk to Fight Diabetes.
Hallowe'en is a bit of an interesting spot for many of us touched by diabetes. For our diabetic children, the focus on candy seems much more a "trick" on them than the "treat" it is for their other classmates. For all of us, it heralds the start of Diabetes Awareness Month. More to the point, people with diabetes don't look sick. Like most others with "invisible" chronic illnesses, we go out in public, day-to-day, disguised as healthy people. (Don't get me wrong: I'd rather it this way and still have all my faculties, thank you!) And while many of us struggle to afford the cost of test strips and infusion sets here in the developed world, diabetic children in emerging nations often have trouble just getting insulin -- much less clean syringes and needles. The International Diabetes Foundation's (IDF's) Life for a Child program is in many ways a diabetes-specific mirror of UNICEF -- it partners with the United Nations through the World Health Organization (WHO), it focuses on children, and it looks to improve life in developing countries.
How far will the change from that morning Starbuck's coffee go in bringing insulin to a child in Nepal or Tanzania -- or possibly someone at risk right in your neighborhood? What if that were multiplied by ten or twenty patrons a day, over the course of a week? a month? a year? Perhaps there's something we can learn from the costumed kids with orange boxes that we can use to help those who need medical support and supplies until a cure can be found.
At the very least, it's something to think about.
