Who knew selfies could make such a difference to a cause close to all our hearts? I certainly didn't. I'm sure you are all aware of the new nomination craze for cancer awareness, as your news feeds will be a collection of fresh faced girls posting make up free selfies. The craze started at the beginning of this week and went viral straight away.
However, there were and still are a lot of opposing views about it and, I'm not going to lie, I was totally against it at first. My first impression (and many others by the views expressed on social media sites) was that all these girls were taking pictures of themselves, 'make-up free', for attention and in this generation most people's impression of the breast cancer awareness campaign was probably vain, attention-seeking girls looking for 'likes' because they are 'raising awareness'.
Then I began to think how vain it was of these girls, when there are many people in the world who are suffering from Cancer at the moment. Nearly everyone will be affected by Cancer at some point in their lives, either themselves or a loved one and taking a selfie is not helping them. Comments filled the internet, questioning how make-up free selfies would cure cancer, as they are not really doing anything productive, like volunteering at local Cancer Research shops or donating money or clothes.
Within hours, however, all the 'haters' were proved wrong as many of the make-up free girls and also the boys who were applying the make-up, flooded Cancer Research U.K. with donations by texting 'beat' to 70007 to donate £3. Within 24 hours Cancer Research had raised over one million pounds in donations from this campaign.
At that moment I think we all realised that these 'awareness selfies' of girls doing nothing but posting an au natural selfie to Facebook and Twitter had actually raised awareness (which initially was the only aim) and it did just that, as we can see from the vast donations to Cancer Research UK.
So after two nominations, I decided to take a ‘make-up free selfie’ and donate to Cancer Research UK. It just shows that we can make a difference by doing little things like donating £3, as it all adds up; it results in more research or action being taken for the things we care about most.
Since the nominations started, two million pounds has been raised and the donations are still coming! So I ask you all, don't just stop here, keep supporting these worthwhile charities. What you might see as a minimal donation or an hour a week volunteering really does have a positive effect!
Roisin Potter
