’Tis the season of stuff. Lots of stuff. The catalogs crowd my mailbox. The dreary musing has started. Will Aunt Milly get a sweater? What about a new phone for the teenager with logorrhea? Who gets the fruit basket? Although our relatives live minutes from gourmet markets, we still give food, as well as scarves, shirts, dishes, doodads. Stuff piled upon stuff.
Everybody over the age of 6 recognizes that Santa Claus has morphed into the Grand Merchandiser, and that much of the stuff is a wasteful exercise in spending. Most Americans are sufficiently fed, clothed and equipped. We don’t need more stuff.
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Yet millions of people throughout the globe live at subsistence. Consider Africa, the continent where mothers wonder whether their newborns will live past their first birthdays, where young adults die from AIDS, where diseases long conquered in the West – like tuberculosis – continue to rage. Africans need food and shelter, vaccines and medicine.
How useful it would be, to divert some of that spending into philanthropy!
The option of course exists for “in honor of” contributions. The gift-giver sends a contribution to a nonprofit in honor of Aunt Milly or the chatty teenager. The gift-as-contribution is easier than traipsing through the malls. And it is tax-deductible.
But an envelope under the tree looks paltry. Recipients – including those of us who have gotten the slim-envelope reminders of our relatives’ generosity – are generally not thrilled. Aunt Milly and the loquacious child – not to mention all the other giftees on “the list” – want a box they can open, filled with a thing they can return, re-gift or stash. Rhetoric aside, most of us want stuff. Maybe the gaily-wrapped package reminds us that somebody cared enough to spend a few minutes, a few dollars on us.
So “Red” products are a welcome sight in the avalanche of holiday merchandise. A handful of corporations have banded together to market these quasi-philanthropic products. If you buy a Gap “Red” T-shirt, a pair of “Red” Converse sneakers, a Motorola “Red” cell phone, Giorgio Armani “Red” sunglasses, or an American Express “Red” credit card, the companies will send a percentage of the profits from those products to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. For instance, Motorola will donate $44.50 for each of a certain model of phone sold; Converse will donate 15 percent of the revenue from its Red shoes sold online; American Express will donate 1 percent of charges on its Red card.
The African with AIDS who doesn’t know what the GAP is, much less covet its goods, will get medications when a well-dressed American buys a GAP Red T-shirt.
Bono and Bobby Shriver spearheaded this campaign, when stores in Britain started selling Red products in February. To date, $10 million has been sent to Africa.
The success of the Red Campaign rests with two parties.
First, companies must sign up. The organizers see “Red” as a continual product line: the campaign was not designed as a one-time holiday spurt. The Red campaign has just started in the United States. Organizers hope that as word spreads here, more retailers will want in. Optimistic supporters envision Red computers, Red televisions, Red DVD players.
Second, consumers must buy the products. In the jargon of retailing, these Red products join a small list of other “ethical issue affinity products.” English consumers have a tradition of “ethical consumption,” in which spenders try to dovetail beneficence with materialism. Skeptics wonder whether there is a market for “ethical consumption” in the United States.
The gifts themselves will still be redundant. Nobody on my list needs another scarf, phone, or T-shirt. Yet somebody will benefit.
After all, ’tis the season not just of holly and fruitcake and boxes stuffed with stuff. ’Tis also the season of kindness.
Joan Retsinas is the managing editor of Medicine & Health/Rhode Island, a monthly journal of the Rhode Island Medical Society.
