Site Moved

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

The New Site is at www.digriz.com

What’s the difference between a week and a year?

If this week 40 people would give $25 each to New Futures Orphanage, instead of that same amount spread out over a year’s time, the children could buy chickens, fish, plants, and other sustainable food sources that would last over a long time, and wouldn’t have to eat the small increments of money coming in, while they’re waiting, so that they have no future. If 20 of us could give $50 this week, instead of spread out over a year, they could eat all year, instead of just on the weeks that someone gives.

Choose a child from the orphanage photo below, hold him or her in your mind, and picture what eating all year long might do for his mind, his health, and his opportunities. Now picture him wondering every day if there will be rice today. It’s easy to do the right thing: give directly, so 100% of the funds go to the orphanage, which is run by volunteers, take it as a tax deduction (they email you a receipt automatically), and you break even, but their lives are changed. Christ reward you according to you charity. — Daniel

I’m asking for your help.

I first got involved with direct giving to the poor because of the New Futures Orphanage. I was scouring the net, looking for just, real, and direct ways to impact the lives of the poor, with small funds. I came across a [ blog ] kept by an English teacher backpacking through Cambodia.

She’d come upon an orphanage there that needed volunteers to teach some English to the children. Teachers would come through, and some would stay a while and do this, and she was captivated and decided to stay for much longer. I was captivated too, and I looked, and they needed $900 in small gifts – that’s all they were asking for last year, and it was being given in small gifts ($25, $35, $45 at a time) through [ givemeaning.org ] a site that serves as the vehicle for giving directly to such small charities.

They finally met their fundraising goal, which was used to provide some basic things to the orphanage, like cinder block walls and a roof to enclose the toilet. I read the updates from Claire, who was giving her time there. She reported on how the children were doing, their improving skills, what this means for their future. I read what the children thought about their situation, and their hopes for their futures; each one is an individual. I knew I had to help.

The poor are Christ to us. They are the icon, the image. They are the means by which we are saved, by being filled with love. Apart from them, I know I at least cannot be saved. They are the ones of whom Christ said, “inasmuch as you have done with your riches to the least of these, who are my brothers, you have so done to me in my impoverishment”.

Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage and the children had to be taken to a facility that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt battery-powered lighting installed and survive with the soaring food costs. The project has established a funding goal of $1000. I’m asking you to help me help them. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them, for this need.

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Will you help? Please?

They are [ here ].

Direct Giving defined: Give in reality, not in theory. Give to people, not to ideas.

The Mines of Ghana are God’s Vineyards

Note: This letter was sent by way of participation in an Oxfam Campaign and borrows content from a sermon by Sociologist Anthony Campolo on corporate responsibility.

Golden Star Resources Ltd.
10901 W. Toller Drive, Suite 300
Littleton, Colorado
80127-6312 U.S.A.

Dear Mr. Tom Mair,

I read the reports from Oxfam (who is like the Mother Theresa of global care and relief agencies), and like a lot of people, I don’t know how to get through to you. We live in a time when people do not believe there will be an accounting for what we do, for how we live our lives. We live in a time when people believe that the lives of one set of families must be improved by exploiting another set of families – in short, we live according to the most primitive ethos with the most advanced technology. We’re savages with computers.

I am asking you to consider the following words, which no doubt you’ve heard before:

There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He improved the land, and strengthened the land, and he gave it into the trust of some men to keep in good faith as honorable stewards of the land. When it was time to harvest the good rewards from the land, he sent his servant to the tenants to collect his share. But they seized the servant, beat him, and sent him back empty-handed. So the landowner sent another servant, and they hit this one on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent another servant and that one they killed. He sent many others, and some of them they beat and some of them they killed. Finally, he sent his own son, whom he loved, thinking “They did not respect my servants, but they will respect my son”. But the tenants had a meeting and decided, “This is the heir. If we kill him, the land will be ours to do as we please.” So they took him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to these stewards when he comes?

Don’t Forget

Please do not stop praying for Kenya. The poor, involved in microbusiness there, have been decimated. It’s easy to suggest that somehow it’s their fault, but it isn’t. It’s not your fault when armed gangs burn your tents and shacks to the ground, with everything you have, and kill people all around you. Below is a photo of Eunice Cherotich, someone I care about there, and a photo of Kenya in the aftermath.

Lee Jung Hyun

Lee Jung Hyun is one of the most unique and creative pop artists in Korea. She developed her own style and made the already interesting pop culture there even more interesting. If Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Madonna became one person, they might start to measure up to Jung Hyun.

Nuh (You)

Letter About Prisoner Medical Care

Senator Constance N. Johnson
Oklahoma State Senate, District 48

Senator Johnson,

I am concerned about legislation introduced and planned for introduction in 2008 by State Senator Owen Laughlin of Woodward and others. The legislation concerns inmates in county jails and financial responsibilities for pre-existing medical conditions. Links at the bottom of this letter include the recent court decision and area news articles on this matter.

On the surface it makes a great deal of sense that counties shouldn’t be responsible for a candidate’s cancer because he happens to get incarcerated. . . .

To the United Nations

I’m writing to ask that you intervene early, not wait, in the erupting situation in Kenya. I am deeply and personally concerned.

Customizing Gifts of Charity

One way of giving on behalf of colleagues and other professionals during the Holidays, is to give something related to their field of endeavour. For instance, for a training and education professional, you might give on their behalf to a school in Cambodia.

Organizations like globalgiving.org and givemeaning.org make it easy to target a sector of charity (medicine, education, justice and human rights, racial justice, etc.) that’s within the sphere of daily life and work of your colleague or loved one.

It’s a creative and appropriate way to give on occasions where giving to the world is precisely the point.

Selecting Charities

This is an excerpted letter of response I wrote to the COO of globalgiving.org — she’d written to thank me for participation, mention some web traffic coming from my site, and ask how I’d learned of their organization. I responded to explain how, personally, I select the charities that suit my interests.

Hi Donna,

Here’s the deal: It was a process. Like many people, I’ve gone years wanting to help the poor but feeling paralyzed – unable to find a way to do it effectively, for several reasons: