Be forewarned: this is somewhat meandering. If “brain diarrhea” really irritates you; kindly don’t read (and subsequently don’t comment that you hate meandering posts). I’m looking for a dialogue.
As I mentioned in one of my posts, I think sometimes activists worry about making a real difference in the world. There’s writing letters, and calling our friends and families on some of their behavior, and if we can spare it, maybe a few dollars to worthy organizations. But sometimes I wonder; does this behavior actually DO anything?
I thought of a friend-of-a-friend I know, that collects donations, and with that money she makes school sets that she sends to a church in Armenia. It’s not terribly expensive stuff; notebooks, pencils, erasers, tissues; but it has a real impact in the quality of education of the students. Every week, she takes her donations collected, buys the materials, and makes little “school boxes” to send away.
But the thing is; these donations don’t last long. The stuff gets used, broken, and stolen. There’s always more that needs to be sent. So what good does it do?
Then I thought after that; what good did the tissues in my school do? Those we went through too, and needed to be replaced all the time as well. What good they did was kept people who went to school with the sniffles from distracting other students and kept other kids from being sick. It’s not that the donations are good because they are permanent; it’s just the donations are more useful if they’re consistent.*
So, for this post, I was thinking it would be a nice idea of Punkassers could make a resolution this year to donate at least once a month to whatever organization floated your boat. This donation could be time, money, or the extra set of pens in the buy-one-get-one sale. The point of this resolution is not to break the bank; but rather make the world that slightly better place in a real, tangible way. Ideas of how to tackle any particular problem would be welcome in the comments, and stories of volunteering are also welcome.
As for myself, I was thinking about small, cheap donations that would cause immediate, real-world help. And I found myself thinking about textile industries across the world, and how many don’t have even basic safety standards, and people have a lot of respiratory problems because of it. I keep thinking the best way to fix that would be to boycott countries that don’t have US-health standards, and to apply pressure for the US to not trade with these countries, but the problem with those solutions are 1) they’re incredibly long term 2) probably not going to actually help anything and 3) come with the problem of putting poverty-level workers out of a job. But if we donated safety equipment, then it helps alleviate some of the problems right now. What does everyone think of trying to set up Dust Mask donations for workers? These are cheap masks, but their ability to reduce respiratory problems is quite high. A few problems I can think of off the bat are a) finding a company that would take them, or someone to distribute them to b) finding a company that would allow it and c) I have no idea how to start a non-profit. Ideas?
*eHow.com has some good advice on how to donate to schools in your area, if that is what you’re inspired to do.
I donate in a haphazard and unofficial fashion to my best friend’s haphazard and unofficial charity–when she was in Tanzania during her Peace Corps stint she became very close to a young girl in her village and arranged for her to go away to school (high school–it’s not free in Tanzania and many villages don’t even have one and girls are usually married before they’d be old enough to attend anyway). Now, she’s helping her pay for nursing school in Dar es Salaam. Ever since she first started, I’ve been helping out too. Over the past five or six years I’ve probably given her close to $2000 overall. She has expanded her efforts since to two other kids, boys, I think, but the only thing I can immediately call to mind is that one of the boys is named “God Bless,” though whether that’s actually his nickname or his real name, I can’t say.
More later, I gotta go throw the younger offspring into the tub and iron the husband’s work clothes before he has to hit the commuter train!
*PS–sorry about my loooong absence, which isn’t ending anytime soon. I’m trying to finish the dratted book. I am seriously thinking about putting up page 1 of the book and each short story for PunkAssCritique, but I chicken out every time I contemplate it.
K, so, back to my Peace Corps friend…what she did in her village kind of addresses the problem of “But the thing is; these donations don’t last long. The stuff gets used, broken, and stolen. There’s always more that needs to be sent. So what good does it do?”
She did a whole bunch of different things, but I will focus on just three examples. One thing she did was teach three of the village families each how to create and maintain a fishpond. The villagers hardly ever ate meat; mostly their diet consisted of beans and field corn (not sweet corn, the kind we eat at dinner over here; rather, the kind we grow to feed animals). Now, making one was something that all the materials except for the fish were at hand, so any other family in the village and any visitors from other villages could do it; she bought the initial fish stock but that’s all she needed to buy, because anyone else who wanted a fishpond could get initial stock from one of those three fishponds. This is an example of helping people get lean, healthy protein into their diets in a way that they can sustain themselves, can spread out among the entire population, etc.
Another thing she did was demonstrate to them an alternative to their slash-and-burn agricultural methods, which uses up and then nearly sterilizes cropland at an appalling rate. I’m not a soil scientist (she was) so I don’t remember all the different ideas she presented, but they were simple, easy ideas–things they could do or not if they chose, with materials that were available to them. The two years she was there, she split her garden in half and grew slash and burn in one part and her no-till/whatever methods in the other and let them see her enhanced yield. A few of her methods, like planting nitrogen-fixing something or others over the fallow season, caught on big-time, she said.
A third thing she did was apply for a grant from USAID to refurbish the village school. She brought home before and after pictures; before, the roof was falling in, the chalkboards were so old and cracked they were unusable, and the floor was broken concrete. She only asked for $2500 and she got the whole thing rebuilt so that it was safe and usable. This isn’t self-sustaining, but it will last for at least a few decades and promote the education of the attending kids, who may grow up to give back better to their communities, because of it.
That’s fantastic!
I live in a pretty poor country, and I’ve got an idea I’m still baking in my mind. My son’s birthday is coming up, and being a well-off Westerner, he’s obviously got more toys than he can play with, not to mention that, at almost age 5, he still does not have much of a grasp of what poverty means. People usually clean out the closets and donate the stuff the kid doesn’t use anymore, but then Xmas and bithdays come around and there you go again. But why should my kid be the only one to get new toys? I will have a big birthday party for him, but I don’t want people to bring presents. I’m not a fascist parent, he will get some good presents, from us, from his grandparents, and if any close friends really have something specific they want to give to him, I’m ok with that. I’ve asked him what he really wants, and discussed the idea of not getting presents from everyone, just getting some good things and some other less fortunate kids getting some good gifts for once. The discussion interests him, and he’s happy with the idea. I’m not ok with his getting gifts just for the sake of gifts. Every single kid always brings a present (parents feel morally obligated) to a party, and often, they are repeats, or things that are just not very nice, etc, it’s a waste in every aspect.
I’m not sure how I’ll organize it. One person sugegsted getting all the toys and then donating them, but I can see some problems with that – first, it’s cruel. My son would open the toys, think they are his, and then would have to give them away. Another friend made a better suggestion, which is to deignate one person to accept gifts or donations and then take them to the organization of our choice. I might do that, but I want to take my son with me to hand over the donations, I want him to see these kids, play with them, realize that he can do something to make their lives a little bit more like his.
I’m playing with the phrasing of the invitation to explain this, and choosing an orphanage that doesn’t get many donations. Unfortunately, there are so many of them. I’m also hoping that might give other parents the same idea.