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.

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:

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:

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.

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.