In case, you know, you need to know:
...how to cope with UPS. When you call UPS, there is no option in any menu to speak to an agent, but if you decline to press any buttons, even for English or French or to enter your tracking number (interesting: if you don't choose a language, you get English) they will eventually tell you that you can't speak to anyone unless you have tracking number, so call back when you've got one. Then a long pause that sounds like it might be permanent, then the weary voice of the autoprompt, asking "So do you still want to speak to an agent?" Say "yes" and the voice recognition software will direct you to an actual competent and (somewhat) sympathetic human. Man, that was tricky--but worth it.*
...what to give for a holiday gift. There's great recommendations (and little bios of their sources so you can check for cred [they all have cred]> at The Advent Book Blog. I recommended a book last week, and now that the person I was giving that gift to has received it, I can link to my recommendation.
...how do something nice. Could you be persuaded to give blood? I know many people can't because of low iron or certain prescriptions in their systems or other health problems, but if you can I think Canadian Blood Services could really use it this holiday season. I base this guess on the fact that last week, the gentleman donating in the chair next to mine experienced the briefest of dizzy spells, and *five* nurses were all over him like a bad suit--cold compresses, elevated legs, fans, cookies, ecetera! They were really really nice, but you just got the feeling they were a little underworked. A few more donators would keep the nurse/donator ratio a bit more even. I know nobody likes needles, and I personally loathe the whole process, but I feel SO GOOD afterwards, knowing I did something for someone (3 someones!), plus awesome karma for the day. I mean, just a few short hours after making this donation, I found a tambourine on the sidewalk!!!! Karmically amazing.
...describe people that are just too hyper. When someone described a potential project (going to see Sherlock Holmes on Boxing Day) as likely to be pandemonium, I said approximately, "Don't worry, we'll deal with the pandemaniacs."** He responded, "That's not a word," but I think it is now, and it's a pretty good one. I give it to you.
Hope that helps!
RR
* I just received the package, so I guess this is a win. But it took a week, four delivery attempts, one formal complaint, plus me saying morosely after I'd registered the complaint, "Can you write on it that I'm very sad?" (no, they can't), so I am not feeling very victor-like.
** What I actually said was dumber than the above, but the neologism was the same, and this is my blog and I'm allowed to edit the past if I choose...right?
Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charity. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2009
Monday, August 18, 2008
You might wanna
1) Attend the launch of the book in the preceeding post--this advertisement was supposed to come at the end of my *The Killing Circle* review, but in my excitement I forgot. See the link for full deets, but quickly, it's tomorrow night at 8:30 at the Gladstone, and it's gonna be awesome.
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
2) Donate school supplies to kids in need via the Salvation Army and Sleep Country. It's always good to give, but this is especially fun because it enables the school-deprived to indulge in coloured pencils and theme binders, and to finally find a good home for the very expensive scientific calculators we were forced to buy in grade 11 (it's official: logarithms are no longer relevant to my life).
We can reach the sea / they won't follow me
RR
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Charity Begins in the Head
As the season of goodwill towards mankind begins, there are of course more charitable appeals in the air, the mail, email, street. While in general I'm pretty sloppy about donations--I always *mean* to give more than I do--I can usually get it together in December, at least a little. My whole rationelle for being a Jew who loves Christmas is probably another blog post, but I think it should suffice to say that people *do* try to be extra nice around this time of year, and remember what they have in common with others, less fortunate or not.
I've been thinking about giving along a couple of lines, and the suggestions I've gotten have shown me that it's not just cellphones and video games that are moving ahead by leaps and bounds unbeknowst to me. One possibility suggested as a gift to people who are anti-gift, and the Gifts of Hope. It's a website where you can donate $$ for a specific purpose in a specific purpose--literacy in Ghana, farm animals in Ethiopa—they've got it priced right down to the goat, so you know that your money does not go into a pool where it is diluted by other people's donations, you bucks go purely to one family that is the recipient of *your* goat. This is a new and, to me, somewhat humourous invention, but it's cool and makes a cute card, and will certainly drum up investment in what is it bottom a deeply humane program to try to help people help themselves.
What's funny about it though is that everyone wants to be *involved* it seems. Just a cheque, to assign decision-making and responsibility to the administrators of the charity is becoming passe. The Christmas drive that I'm involved in this year, as many years in the past, is not a cash one, or even just a big box of canned goods and unwrapped toys. We have been assigned families in the nearby community who are in dire straights (I'm sorry, I would normally post a link here for your interest, but it's a corporate giving program and there isn't one of the public) and our donations are to be specific items on their wish-list, specific to their unique needs, purchased by the donators ourselves.
The profiles we receive are incredibly detailed. We get names and ages, clothing and shoe sizes, personal preferences, and a hierarchy of needs from toys and games to sweatpants and sanitary napkins. To me, it seems dreadfully invasive and undignified. The kidstuff is fun to shop for, but I feel like it's not fair to the parents to take away the joy in picking out the pretty toys for the kids. And the grownup stuff--knowing that mom Sandy takes three sizes different between top and bottom, knowing what basic household items are missing, is really too much for me.
I made these complaints to a colleague--it all seemed to be a bit of bourgeois mistrust, an update on "You can't give a panhandler loose change because he'll just spend it on booze. Better to give money to an agency, that'll make sure it goes towards food, clothes and a sensible job-training program." Only now, tales of misappropriation and scandal lurking in our heads ("I can't remember when, or which one, but one of them there charities was spending like *ninety* percent of the revenue on 'administration', and we know what that is!")--if you want to make sure your donation doesn't evapourate directly into ethanol, better make sure it's in concrete form of something practical ("Blue jeans, a teddy bear and four cans of baked beans!") with a name and address gift card attached.
My colleague pointed out the system isn't really all that cynical--many of these are single parent homes, and shopping with the kids, or finding time to do it at all for a working parent, might be an issue. Plus they'd signed up for the program, so they clearly either lacked my qualms or found their need to be greater them.
Fair enough. She made good points, and vehemently, clearly concerned that she not let my potential aid to these families disappear due to some semi-imagined PCness. It was good of her, and I shut up and returned to reading my list.
And quickly got sucked in. There are several toys on the list that I loved as a wee one, and I'd like to go see the updates. And there were a couple requests for "teen novels," a category that I have very strong opinions on, and then of course there's the vegetarian baked beans. So I made my own shopping list and that's when I realized the genius of the thing. If I buy everything that twigged my interest, and I probably will, I'll wind up spending sizeably more than what would strike me as a "decent donation" in cash. That's what all these details are really about--it's easier to give more to people you relate to as in some way just like you. And in reading the list, I found that connexion, as I suspect most people did. Everybody needs sweatpants, warm socks and novels. We're all human, after all.
Went upstairs and had a smoke
RR
I've been thinking about giving along a couple of lines, and the suggestions I've gotten have shown me that it's not just cellphones and video games that are moving ahead by leaps and bounds unbeknowst to me. One possibility suggested as a gift to people who are anti-gift, and the Gifts of Hope. It's a website where you can donate $$ for a specific purpose in a specific purpose--literacy in Ghana, farm animals in Ethiopa—they've got it priced right down to the goat, so you know that your money does not go into a pool where it is diluted by other people's donations, you bucks go purely to one family that is the recipient of *your* goat. This is a new and, to me, somewhat humourous invention, but it's cool and makes a cute card, and will certainly drum up investment in what is it bottom a deeply humane program to try to help people help themselves.
What's funny about it though is that everyone wants to be *involved* it seems. Just a cheque, to assign decision-making and responsibility to the administrators of the charity is becoming passe. The Christmas drive that I'm involved in this year, as many years in the past, is not a cash one, or even just a big box of canned goods and unwrapped toys. We have been assigned families in the nearby community who are in dire straights (I'm sorry, I would normally post a link here for your interest, but it's a corporate giving program and there isn't one of the public) and our donations are to be specific items on their wish-list, specific to their unique needs, purchased by the donators ourselves.
The profiles we receive are incredibly detailed. We get names and ages, clothing and shoe sizes, personal preferences, and a hierarchy of needs from toys and games to sweatpants and sanitary napkins. To me, it seems dreadfully invasive and undignified. The kidstuff is fun to shop for, but I feel like it's not fair to the parents to take away the joy in picking out the pretty toys for the kids. And the grownup stuff--knowing that mom Sandy takes three sizes different between top and bottom, knowing what basic household items are missing, is really too much for me.
I made these complaints to a colleague--it all seemed to be a bit of bourgeois mistrust, an update on "You can't give a panhandler loose change because he'll just spend it on booze. Better to give money to an agency, that'll make sure it goes towards food, clothes and a sensible job-training program." Only now, tales of misappropriation and scandal lurking in our heads ("I can't remember when, or which one, but one of them there charities was spending like *ninety* percent of the revenue on 'administration', and we know what that is!")--if you want to make sure your donation doesn't evapourate directly into ethanol, better make sure it's in concrete form of something practical ("Blue jeans, a teddy bear and four cans of baked beans!") with a name and address gift card attached.
My colleague pointed out the system isn't really all that cynical--many of these are single parent homes, and shopping with the kids, or finding time to do it at all for a working parent, might be an issue. Plus they'd signed up for the program, so they clearly either lacked my qualms or found their need to be greater them.
Fair enough. She made good points, and vehemently, clearly concerned that she not let my potential aid to these families disappear due to some semi-imagined PCness. It was good of her, and I shut up and returned to reading my list.
And quickly got sucked in. There are several toys on the list that I loved as a wee one, and I'd like to go see the updates. And there were a couple requests for "teen novels," a category that I have very strong opinions on, and then of course there's the vegetarian baked beans. So I made my own shopping list and that's when I realized the genius of the thing. If I buy everything that twigged my interest, and I probably will, I'll wind up spending sizeably more than what would strike me as a "decent donation" in cash. That's what all these details are really about--it's easier to give more to people you relate to as in some way just like you. And in reading the list, I found that connexion, as I suspect most people did. Everybody needs sweatpants, warm socks and novels. We're all human, after all.
Went upstairs and had a smoke
RR
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