Do you remember these little boxes? For many people who grew up in Canada, these Unicef fundraising boxes were synonymous with Halloween and trick-or-treating back in elementary school. It's been a really long time since I've taken to the streets on October 31st in search of sweets but thinking about it a little while ago, I realized that it had also been quite a while since I had seen or heard of the Unicef boxes too.
Now, not that I have anything personally invested in the little orange box, but it still felt like a little piece of me died inside when I found out that Unicef Canada had stopped running the program. According to this article on CBC.ca, the decision to end the campaign
was made back in 2006, siting the "labour-intensive" act of coin-rolling not being worth what was raised as being one of the main reasons behind the move. While the program continues in the US, Unicef Canada has moved to implementing a more standard fundraising initiative aimed at educating students about world poverty and education issues and encouraging them to develop their own programs to help.
I reflected back to my trick-or-treating days and found myself remembering how none of us really knew why we were collecting change at Halloween or what Unicef was. I recall education on the subject being slim but at the same time we all knew the change was going to a good cause, helping other kids, and I think we all felt a bit of pride in playing our part no matter how small.
That having been said, I'd be interested to learn more about the general reaction to Unicef abruptly halting a program that had been in existence for 50 years. The reason seems rather trivial for the most part and as we've seen time and time again, people get very emotional when tradition is threatened. For that matter, I wonder if the move has affected their brand recognition now, seeing as the name isn't getting the same face-time (even if it was only one day a year).
From a socially conscious point-of-view, I appreciate the effort to increase awareness among students about the issues and the significance behind the money they raise. According to the CBC article, Unifec Canada managed to raise $3 million every Halloween for 15 years through the campaign before it was stopped. I'm curious to see what their new program is bringing in and if they're finding it was worth the re-branding efforts.
2 comments:
I wouldn't call $3 million too shabby. I do miss this campaign too. During a holiday where kids are thinking about getting, this teaches them to give. The charity should reconsider the move to eliminate the campaign and perhaps use it in addition to in-school education so the kids understand their contributions.
That does sound a little strange. The only thing that I can think of is that Unicef wasn't getting all of the money raised - maybe some people were keeping it for themselves? It's too bad that Unicef feels that they need to eliminate the campaign and focus on other streams of revenue. Hallowe'en will never be the same.
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