AMNA WAHEEDA
People follow their favorite icons. Sometimes these celebrities bring a spark of shine to lives of the poor and the needy just by saying a few words.
Over the past decades, the idea of using celebrity for charity programme is becoming popular. Now famous people all over the world are contributing to different noble causes. Unfortunately, disasters hit the planet every year, so these celebrities are always in need. This concept of taking famous people for public service message is not confined to any part of the world.
Now this phenomena is spreading even faster, people are more aware than in the past and follow their favourite celebs all around, keeping an eye on every moment of theirs. This is not as easy as it looks, this task is not so simple, selecting the right personality for your charity campaigns demands strong home work.
Stars join any campaign for number of reasons, they are not always interested in philanthropy, sometimes its all about staying in the news. Another point, not to be ignored, is that these famous people themselves can generously participate for that cause. All the main UN organisations, not just Unicef, now have “goodwill ambassadors. Many of them are from Hollywood. Angelina Jolie represents the UN High Commission for Refugees, Drew Barrymore the World Food Programme. Reema khan and others from Pakistan also served in this capacity. Some Indian artists also nominated as UN ambassadors”.
What do they get from this when they have to bear travel and other expenses ? of course fame ..
Sometimes famous personalities start their own social work projects and succeed. Perhaps a good example of this from Pakistan would be Celebrity turned social worker “Imran Khan”. People opened their purses in his name. All stratum of society supported him in his noble cause, although people at that time did not know what Shukat Khanum would turn in to but they had a sense of trust. Time has proved that Imran is the man of his words. Reema Khan also became part of his team in motivating people to donate for the hospital. Queen of hearts lady Diana and Bollywood artist Amir Khan visited this hospital.
After Imran, others cashed their name and started their own charity projects. Artists from our neighbor country are famous for their kind heartedness. Salman Khan fans know that he loves children, this eventually encouraged him to start a charity project for underprivileged children called ‘Being Human’. What started out as a small charity organisation, is now an extremely popular foundation that help children with their education and healthcare. Aishwarya Rai is known for being very charitable. First she donated her eyes to the eye bank association in India, and then later on started a foundation on her name to help the needy.
There is a long list of people from different fields who are supporting charity work but most important is to see the other side of the story. What agencies are looking for their ambassador for charity work, it is seen that appropriate people are selected for this. Fan following and personality play important role in selection, sometimes projects demand specific gender or ethnic and religious background, for example if one is looking for fund raising for breast cancer patients any female icon is most suitable choice. United Nations ambassadors are generally the people who are not only famous in their fields but also have good communication skills. Agencies go for those personalities who can contribute themselves in charity.
Now why do celebrities say yes to charity work? To serve humanity is one reason but not the only one. Sometimes, charity projects give hit to poor rating artist. One reason that cannot be ignored is that charity works are free from tax so many icons use this as platform for to get public attention. Singers often look for NGO that can organise their concert and save them from tax.
Pakistan is not separate from this, many well know faces here started charity work but were later exposed by their rivals or media.They break each other’s secret. On the other hand now people are very smart and choosy in selecting messages. According to the research conducted in University of Manchester people are more choosy now. From 2011 to onwards, people are not paying much attention to celebrity calling, even newspapers of United States have less news related to this on their front page.
It is not so simple to say yes to any charity call by celebrities, one has to think for a moment..sometimes cause is noble but channel is fake…It’s the right of icon to use PR stunt but no one appreciates to earn from sufferings of others..charity is a noble deed that make us able to think in terms of unity as Rumi said
We may know who we are or we may not. We may be Muslims, Jews or Christians but until our hearts become the mould for every heart we will see only our differences.”
The writer is a teacher and a
student of MPhil