When I was dancing up a storm at last year’s Goatface Ball and mercilessly chugging cheap beer at Queen’s Players, I thought I was just attending another fantastic party. Who knew that a large part of my tickets weren’t just paying the DJ and granting me the oh-so-rare (and somewhat lethal) open bar access? Instead, I was one of the many unknowing, fun-loving attendees of our modern-day, student-run charity fundraiser events. Whether you were at Minq last Friday or Float the week before, did you ever wonder where your money was going? Maybe you already knew, but how did it get from your wallet to a water pump in rural Ethiopia? What are the ethical concerns and debates behind the concept of charity? Let’s take Goatface, a charity whose proceeds I speculated may end up with nomadic goat herders in Nepal, or something of the sort. Not even close. Goatface raises money for Kingston General Hospital’s (KGH) palliative care unit. This is the end-of-life unit for patients with terminal illness, and the proceeds go to improving medical care and treatment to reduce the severity of suffering and improve quality life in their last months. Goatface started their partnership with KGH in 2006. Since then, the committee has grown and now works with local sponsors and businesses, student DJs and of the Kingston community to make sure a giant cheque ends up at KGH at the end of the year. Over $150,000 has been donated since Goatface started their partnership with the palliative care unit. “If students are going to be partying and going to attend these events regardless, why don’t we make this a win-win situation and donate to a good cause?” said Julia Jones, ArtSci ’12 and one of the chairs of the 2010-11 Goatface committee. “A lot of party charities are making much more money in comparison to other charities. We say go out, we’re going to throw you a sick party, and your money will be going to a good place,” she said. Watercan events are fairly similar to the parties the Goatface committee throws. Money from ticket sales gets sent off to their head office in Ottawa and distributed accordingly to various water initiatives in Eastern Africa. Their mission statement is based on fighting global poverty by helping the world’s poorest people gain access to clean water, basic sanitation and hygiene education. Since 1987, Watercan’s programs have reached over one million people in the world’s poorest regions. Molly Skelly, Artsci ’12 and co-chair of Queen’s Watercan explained how Watercan works at Canadian universities. “Each university has a Watercan chapter, and the goal is to raise $40,000 between all of the universities in Canada and that goes towards 13 primary schools in the Bono district in Kenya,” she said. “The money that we make is matched by the Canadian International Development Agency three to one.” Skelly said she’s also aware of the ignorant tendencies of Watercan guests. “At the entrance of our parties and the Facebook event, we have a blurb about what we’re doing and where the money is going. People still have no idea,” she said “I feel like when they go to parties, they’re not interested in donating to charities, they’re just wrapped up in the party aspect. It bothers us a lot.” Skelly said the Watercan committee is looking to raise money in different ways, and in doing so, increasing awareness. “We had a really successful photo exhibition of Watercan’s on-the-ground work in Eastern Africa earlier in the year,” she said, adding that the Queen’s chapter is also looking to partner up with some restaurants in Kingston and conduct water initiatives. Charities raising money for impoverished African countries have created an iconic image of the 21st century, such as the World Vision-eqsue image of smiling North American’s hugging small African children. This type of aid can be tied back to the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine, when Bob Geldof, an Irish rocker and activist held relief concerts to raise money. When Bono of U2 got involved, he said Geldof’s concerts were depressing and development should be made “sexy.” Vanity Fair did a cover story on this concept, saying that the main aim for charities was to attract a more hip crowd. This mentality has transferred over to the parties charities like Watercan throw. “There are big problems with this because we are defining what is an important development issue based on what we think is sexy,” said Paritosh Kumar, a professor in the global development studies department. “Malaria and having public latrines is not something Angelina Jolie would go for, for example. In our celeb-centered culture, it may transfer over to what a society would go for,” he said. “Campaigning for HIV/AIDS is more fashionable; since there is money in this, non-governmental organizations start working on those issues because it’s a question of funding. It’s a top-down model.” “The big question surrounding development is around created relations, between North and South, between what we consume, and how it is produced,” Kumar said. “The whole concept of charity completely sidesteps these kinds of issues.” Instead of a one-stop donation or a quick-fix of aid money, African countries want to improve and restructure trade relations. Five years ago at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, major African NGO’s said that they were fed up with their dependency on charity and asked for Western donors to stop dumping excess products into their markets because the ‘help’ was completely destroying the domestic economies. “Big party events like this aren’t sensitizing us to the causes of the problem,” Kumar said. Queen’s Player’s has a unique approach that combines international and local development initiatives. “Charity is the justification for Players, really,” said Ian Eatock, the vice-president of the board for Queen’s Players. “If you’re going to party that hard, you should definitely have a moral justification. This year we did something different,” he said, adding that they gave their money to QIVA, a micro-credit organization. Before, they just donated their money to local charities. “The idea was that we wanted international initiatives to fuel the local charity aspect. The way that micro-credit is set up is that you don’t actually give the money away, you lend it and get it back in a year. Small-scale entrepreneurs in developing countries borrow the money and start a small business.” When the money comes back to them, they reinvest it in the Kingston community by donating to local women’s shelters, Martha’s Table and Camp Outlook, he said. Daniella Dávila, Artsci ’11 and the Social Issues Commissioner at the AMS, said it’s also important to question the larger systemic issues of participating in charities. “It’s about charity versus solidarity,” she said. “By going to these parties, people need to ask themselves why these charities are needed, who’s directing this charity, who’s managing the funding, why have they chosen the causes they’ve chose, and what privileges did they have to choose who to ,” she said. “And if we’re talking about poverty, we need to ask ourselves if we in our everyday lives the structures that allow us to have the socio-economic statuses that we already have.” Hannah Davis, Arstsci ’11, said the concept of charity does not address the root of the problem. “Charity goes back to the politics of convenience; as long as it’s convenient, people will continue to ,” she said. “We also have to look at the politics of representation, who we construct as needing our help and who is more worthy of our help or money and what ways are acceptable for doing it. So, going and partying is supposedly an acceptable way because we’re getting something back.” During a lecture for the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in Belgium, philosopher Slavoj Zizek discussed the ethical implications of charity from an extremist anti-capitalist perspective. He contended that charity is no longer just an idiosyncrasy of some good guys here and there, but a basic constituent of our economy. He introduced the concept of cultural capitalism, where your money isn’t just buying something, it’s buying into something. When you buy your ticket to a fancy event, you also buy your redemption for being a consumerist and are fulfilling a whole series of ethical duties, he said. According to Zizek, Charity degrades and demoralizes, and it’s immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. Despite his cynicism, he said every bit ultimately helps. “Of course we should help,” he said. “It’s horrible to see a child whose life is ruined by an operation that costs $20.” In the grand scheme of things, Kumar said charities may be essential and the difference between whether someone lives or dies. “We shouldn’t generalize because they are charities that are doing really amazing work. Like in some cases, for example Haiti after the earthquake, not having water or food and people are dying.”
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