To Write Love on Her Arms

It has always irked me that artists who perform at charity galas, benefit concerts and other charitable events usually, by some eerie coincidence, have a single or tour to promote. Call me a pessimist, it just seems that a worthy cause is the easiest way to drum up media coverage for every self-obsessed, self-promotional starlet and wannabe with something to flog.

I'm not suggesting that any charitable event is a sham, but if you can get a few press mentions for your upcoming album while helping to feed some starving Africans, the attitude seems to be: bring it on.

By their own admission, the To Write Love On Her Arms organisation (TWLOHA) is "not a 24-hour helpline", as the organisation's official MySpace profile states:

We are not trained professionals. TWLOHA hopes to serve as a bridge to help.

The issue that TWLOHA has dedicated itself to is the tragedy of youth suicide and self-harm. Certainly a worthy and deserving cause—and of course I absolutely support anyone doing anything to help prevent suicide, youth or otherwise—but my problem is with the way in which they go about it.

If you go to the TWLOHA website—if, say, you were a young person possibly suffering from depression and looking for help—what do you think would be the first thing you see? A hotline number? A list of links to helpful organisations?

Actually, the first thing you see is a splash page advertising pre-orders for a book.

The second thing you see, if you're like me and miss the microscopic "continue to twloha.com" link under the fold, is a shopfront where you can buy TWLOHA-branded merchandise at severely inflated prices. The shopfront is, of course, brought to you by Zambooie^®.

On the shopfront's sidebar is a navigation menu with links to make a donation to TWLOHA, visit the organisation's MySpace page, join the street team (powered by FanCorps^®) and add a TWLOHA badge to your website or MySpace profile (powered by SocialVibe^®).

Above these sponsorship links is the site's internal navigation menu, in which the "Find Help" link is the third item, underneath a link to a calendar of TWLOHA-sponsored concerts and events.

The MySpace profile is just as bad: a long-winded and self-indulgent history section full of name-drops and photos of celebrity musicians wearing TWLOHA merch, interspersed with links and advertisements to buy T-shirts and other TWLOHA-branded items.

The single paragraph which directs troubled young people to help is squeezed between an award the profile won from MySpace, and instructions on how to promote TWLOHA with flyers and banners.

I'm not sure who they think their audience is: people at risk of depression and suicide themselves, or kids who like to feel warm and fuzzy inside thinking they're doing something to help by buying a $40 T-shirt, but are at no risk themselves.

Surely that $40 would be better spent by donating it directly to Kids Help Line, an organisation that can have a direct, practical positive effect on depression and self-harm among young people.

Fist2Face was recently the venue for a TWLOHA-hosted concert with some local rock bands and speeches by the organisation's two founders, who had flown half-way across the world to spread the word about TWLOHA. I didn't go, but if a troubled young person had come to get some advice or find help, they would have been in trouble: there was no information packs, no flyers, nothing.

The founders got up and spoke, but it was less about suicide prevention and more about the musicians they've met backstage at concerts.

beyondblue and Kids Help Line would love to have the kind of exposure an event like that would generate, but they were nowhere to be seen.

TWLOHA has got exactly the right idea by positioning themselves within the music scene that kids are passionate about, but they completely fail the people they are trying to help by concentrating more on self-promotion and less on suicide prevention.

The organisation is making a push into Australia this year, and Fist2Face is one of the outlets that will be selling TWLOHA merch. Originally I refused to have any part of it, but after talking it over with my boss we decided that a better approach would be to look into local depression and suicide prevention organisations and try to get some kind of information card to give away with each shirt.

Maybe then it won't be a complete waste of kids' hard-earned money.

Personally I believe strongly in Kids Help Line, where my second cousin worked for a number of years, but if anyone knows of any other similar organisations based in Australia please let me know so I can get in touch with them.

UPDATE: I've posted a short update with the response I got from Kids Help Line.