December 3, 2008

Britney Spears World Tour

Britney Spears has announced her first world tour in five years. For the low price of $350 (general admission), you can go see her gyrate and crow her songs or whatever it is she does. Or you could do one of the following:

-Sponsor an impoverished child with AIDS or HIV for 10 months.
-Save the lives of 350 Africans. One dollar (combined with other donations) builds a well and provides enough water for one African for the rest of their life.
-Buy three and a half acres of a rainforest.
-Buy enough fair trade coffee to last you a month (give or take) and help coffee growers earn fair pricing for their trade.
-Send 18 care packages to soldiers during the holidays.
-Give 11 families that have been through a natural disaster, food and clean water for two weeks.
-Buy 70 LifeStraws. LifeStraw is a point-of-use water purifier that lasts up to one year and removes 99% of waterborne bacteria and viruses.

Those are just a few of the ways you can spend $350. There are numerous other places where you can make one-time donations of any amount. I understand that all of the $350 doesn't go to Britney Spears, and there are a lot of people to pay on a concert tour (everyone from her hairdresser to the guy making sure the lights work). But $350? Diarrhea alone is responsible for the deaths of 1.8 million people each year, 90% of whom are children under 5, and 88% of diarrhea is caused by unclean water and inadequate sanitation (World Health Organization via Blood:Water Mission).
I think maybe enabling these people to have clean water, or ensuring we don't destroy the earth or ensuring that we don't promote sweatshops is a better way to spend our money. Just a thought.

2 comments:

Leslie Johnson said...

This is a GREAT blog. But I am curious about the $350.00 coffee. I don't ever want to hear another person gripe about how much I spend at Starbucks. I can promise it's not anywhere near $350.00 a month. Especially now that I have my gold card! :)

DTDorrin said...

Thanks Leslie!
And you could probably buy a lot more than just a month's worth of coffee for $350 (coffee beans, that is). I just know fair trade coffee is usually more expensive because the farmers are getting paid more for their coffee.