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:

Letters to Congress

I’m not political. But recently, I sent letters to each of my senators, and the representative for my district. This is an example of one such letter:

Representative Fallin,

I’ve lived in your district for about three years, but I’m less familiar with your work than I’d like to be; I’m writing to find out what you’re doing about two things in particular – Sudan and Burma. And I’d like to urge you to do everything humanly possible.

You remember at the end of the film Schindler’s List, when he took off his watch and said “This could have bought several more lives. I could have done more…” That’s a man summing up the meaning of his life.

It’s over!

For now, anyway. They fixed the power on my street this evening, so we’re finally off the generator and can turn on all the lights. We took quite a hit – this area lost so many old trees, literally ripped out of the ground in some cases, by the ice storm – it was a mini Tunguska.

Friendship and Encouragement

Got a book dedicated to me.

Workplace Tolerance for All

Tolerance is a commitment to accept individuals I may never understand and cultures I may never grasp, as though they don’t require my acceptance. Everyone knows that in the workplace, one is expected not to discriminate on the basis of the big four: ethnicity, gender, creed, or sexuality. In practice, however, several types of discrimination tend to fall through the cracks. Often they are overlooked entirely, even if they do just as much harm. By delineating only certain types of protection, these forms of discrimination, arguably and actually, are given prevalence:

Educational Resources

An old site of mine got picked up in a Korean review of educational resources:

기타 ― http://freeweb.digiweb.com/arts/ddigriz/ESL.html

Daniel DiGriz의 Articles and Items에는 한국인에 관련된 내용이 실려 있다.

Alas, that host dried up their free hosting years ago, and I’ve since moved on.

Keeping Workspaces Green

They take paint (yes, you shouldn’t put that in the trash), arts & craft chemicals, automotive fluids, batteries, computer monitors and other parts (e-waste) – if you’ve got this stuff lying around, don’t put it in the trash, the dumpster, or your “big blue” – take it to your local City-sponsored Hazardous Waste Disposal Center.

FidoNet & HumaNet

This is a nice trip down memory lane. In 1994-95, I ran a Fidonet Node, and started my own packet-switching network – namely, HumaNet (Network for the Arts & Humanities). Before there was myspace or AOL, there was Fidonet! And yes, I was doing it with OS/2.

918-743-4486
TULSA, OK Humanet OS/2 System
(1994) Daniel DiGriz

– From the Historical BBS List: bbslist.textfiles.com

Holiday Generosity

Instead of gift cards this year, consider giving a charitable donation in the name of each recipient to kiva.org or oxfam.org. With kiva, you can print the photo and information about the recipient (and it will indeed be that exact person who receives your help) – it makes a wonderful card insert, and they will actually see your profile next to the person you helped when they go to the site. With oxfam, you are acting as St. Nicholas to a world that cannot afford for their children to eat anything this Christmas. Let’s love the poor together. Give.