The Season of Giving
“Give not to get something in return, give to inspire others to give”
From one of my last posts, I talked about charity extensively. The “post a pet plant a tree” story showed an incredibly shallow/lazy method of charity that some people for one take advantage of and secondly where most people participating stop at.
What inspires me?
There is one person I can attribute to inspiring me to give back to the community. That’s my grandmother. My grandma who lives in the Philippines has the heart of a saint. In the Philippines, being a developing nation, a lot of folks, especially kids are less fortunate than our family. I remember my grandma always taking the extra step to feed the entire neighbourhood, invite kids for food and give out presents. She’s honestly the one person I look up to a lot since she’s also the one that basically raised me when I was younger when my parent’s weren’t home. In Australia, I remember one time, we used to visit this stripmall in Blacktown, a suburb of Sydney, where there was a salon my mom and sister used to go to and a Filipino restaurant where my family would eat…
I remember this lady, a Filipino lady, about the same age, maybe slightly younger than my grandma who seemed like she was homeless. I remember my grandma making friends with her and anytime we visited they would talk and gossip like pre-teen girls. This was honestly one of the most impactful things that inspires me cause my grandma humanized less fortunate people. I remember them just laughing and talking like they were best friends in school, not a care in the world about each other’s situation. My grandma looks at people as people, that’s probably the most important thing I’ve learned from her. Since then, anytime I’ve walk by homeless people, I honestly feel extreme hearthbreak. I feel so much guilt and shame anytime I walking past when I don’t have change. I feel most people just walk past unhoused people and ignore them like they aren’t there, I won’t lie I’ve done this a few times and I felt so ashamed of myself… A rich ass country like Canada, or even Australia can’t fucking provide for their own citizens. How is that fair? If you argue they did this to their lives because of addiction or their own actions, you can honestly go fuck yourself cause I think all people deserve a good standard of living. That’s why I try to educate others that social programs are what we need for progress in this world, and honestly charity is something that shouldn’t be the answer to the shitty things in the world.
One of the most proud things I’ve done is a story on New Years Eve 2018 which might inspire you to give this season. In 2018, my highschool friends and I planned a New Years Eve get together. We planned on going to hang out at my friend (Shahrose’s) who lives in Hamilton and go to one of the clubs there for New Years. Mind you, I didn’t want to do clubbing, I wanted to go to Niagara and watch see the falls and fireworks with my girlfriend(ex now).
But somehow my friends were able to convince me to go clubbing. I remember it was quite a mess. My girlfriend and I got fucking soaked by some dude popping champagne and from that day on I will never go clubbing on New Years Eve, it’s overrated as fuck and not that fun.
What stood out for me on the night though is what happened after. I remember there were homeless people on the street of the club. I remember asking my girlfriend if she had like change for $20s but she didn’t. I remember going up to two homeless people on the street asking the patrons leaving the club for money and giving them both the each $20 I had in my wallet. I had a conversation with one of them and they told me that that $20 could last them a few days for food and coffee on cold nights like the New Years Eve that night where it was snowing. I won’t lie I almost broke down crying infront of my friends. It shook me to my core on how much a small amount of money can make a difference in a person’s life.
A tangent btw, the reason why homelessness in Canada has been rampant since the 90s was because of national housing program was eliminated by the Liberals (under Jean Chrétien). You can read more on this on a book by the late Jack Layton, “Homelessness: How to End the National Crisis”.
Honestly, what I hope you can get from that story, is that no matter what the situation is, be inclined to give. I hope that next time you see someone struggling, you see them as a human being, don’t just ignore them and try to help out when you can. A small gift, can make a difference in the world. As they always say, its not the gift that matters, its the thought that matters. I feel like having this basic mindset can honestly make people a good “gift giver”, I’ve been complimented such but I think I’ve always just been a GOD at gift giving anyways.
The season of giving
Christmas time is a huge time for charities and non-profits to receive donations and help from people. Understandably people are more inclined and motivated to give in the festive season. It’s funny how originally, gifting and giving during Christmas time is a symbol of the Three Wise Men giving gifts to Jesus. Now its a highly commercialized, capitalistic practice. I want to believe though that people are genuine in giving, and volunteering during the festive season.
I have the unfortunate luck of having my birthday, 4 days after Christmas time. As a kid, I rarely received two gifts a year, the usual one gift for Christmas and one for a birthday was always mixed together into a singular gift from friends, and family. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t really go out to celebrate my birthday. I don’t throw parties, I don’t invite people over, I don’t celebrate at all, except maybe a birthday dinner with family. I’ve always kinda felt my birthday isn’t that important, and really I don’t like the idea of celebrating another year of my life getting older. I feel like I’m losing time on the things I want to do in life…
Anyways, I wanted to talk about what I do on my birthday which for everyone else is essentially just Christmas time. For the past couple of years, I’ve been running fundraisers to help out a cause. The first year it was the Canadian Cancer Society, a cause I chose for two reasons. One being a few of my friends who’ve been diagnosed of cancer but stuck it out and are living their best lives right now, I’m proud of them. Another reason being my grandpa and myself. Years ago. My mom found out that her dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. Due to the unfortunate science of of passing down genes and heriditary diseases, I have a larger chance of developing cancer down the line. I hope I don’t, but it’s a scary thought. Ever since then I’ve been a bit more watchful of my health, I’ve been trrying to take care of myself as much as I can. Still eat like shit though, that’s something that’ll take me a while to fix.
For the second fundraiser I did was for the Canadian Mental Health Association. This one might a be a bit on the nose, but mental health is something that I’ve struggle a bit on for the past few years, and the pandemic has made it a bit worse. By the way, this is the most I’ve talked about this publicly, I’ll tell you right now I’m not much of an open book to most people, not even friends, or my ex at the time, even my family. I only feel comfortable writing this because this is kinda like my safe space. I’m more comfortable writing this out than speaking it. Not sure why, but therapy has helped out on this a bit. I’ll tell you right now a few years ago I wouldn’t think about doing this at all. Anyways, last year I proudly able to raise $1000 for the CMHA through my Pokemon unboxing and stream.
This year I have plans on moving my fundraising from Facebook to make a GoFundMe, ever since Instagram implemented links, it has been useful for these types of things. A mutual of mine created a Movember fundraiser and was successful so I decided it was probably better to do on there. My goal for this year is at least $2000, which is a huge goal to reach. I’m planning on doing another Pokemon unboxing, and 24 hour stream filled with goals, each time we reach the money goal, we do something, the final one being shaving my beautiful head of hair OR actually dyeing it like white or something. Also I’m planning on matching each dollar that’s donated so in reality the goal for the people to reach is $1000. Honestly it’s still in the works and school is a bit of a hassle so I haven’t been able to plan much but so far this is my plans. Also this isn’t an “#ad” to guilt you to donate to my fundraiser, I encourage you guys to find a cause you’re passionate with and donate to them!
Guilt picking
I think one of the hardest things on doing a fundraiser is choosing a suitable charity or non-profit to do. There are MANY out there that are deserving of fundraising. It’s good to have a mission and reason on which place you pick. I’ picked the two I’ve talked about and explained why. I usually research thoroughly aswell before I pick a charity. A good website to visit to see some charities is https://www.charityintelligence.ca/ or https://www.canadahelps.org/en/
These list the bigger named charities in Canada and give a good description on where your money goes to and the impact it makes. The biggest thing I look for is financial transparacy. The more open the books the more inclined I am to choose the charity. I also pick less religiously motivated charities and non-profits. Charities like for example: the Salvation Army is a protestant Christian charitable organization, have allegedly refused to help LGBT peoples. World Vision is a Evangelican Christian organization that has history of corruption and controversy within. I tend to pick secular organization that isn’t inheritly motivated by religion.
There are many charities, to pick from locally too, usually the local library might have a dedicated website for this. In Halton, the area I live in they have a website where you can find places to volunteer at. My point in all this is always research and be dilligent in where you put your charity and effort to. Unfortunately some charities mislead their donors. Sometimes picking a smaller charity might be more helpful.
This year I’m stuck between 3 charities to choose from. The David Suzuki Foundation is one of the places I’m thinking since they deal a lot with environmental issues, and challenges that we all face. Another is Alice House a organization that helps women and children with housing and couselling and support services. And the final one being closer to home which is Milton Transitional Housing which help families or individuals in crisis with subsidized transitional housing. All these are great causes to give to and hopefully you reading this think about donating yourselves. I wish I can give to all three honestly but a single person can only do so much when that person is a student working part time with a car that breaks down every week…
Milton Transitional Housing was an organization I wanted to give to mostly because of the current trend of housing in the GTA. We have one of the biggest housing bubbles in the world, at this point I think the biggest. Housing is a human right that EVERY single person deserves. Under no circumstance should there be any person in the streets, especially in a rich country like Canada. I’d hope that Milton Transitional Housing would be a good local organization that directly helps families with housing costs.
Ultimately, I’ve been having climate anxiety and feel our slowly eroding environment is probably THE biggest challenge we have in the world. Thing is though, if we continue, and wipe out the entire human race, the Earth will still be here, it’ll still evolve without humans. Our destruction of the Earth is a matter of the survival of the human race. I think charity to the David Suzuki foundation does help but in a small scale in all honestly, the real action is change in the policies in the government. Divestment in oil and coal for our power, and investing in clean energy. Creating technologies that move away from plastics and non-reusable waste. A big issue we rarely talk about is fast fashion and the amount of waste cheaply made clothes create on an annual basis. Unfortunately this all really stems on the system of capitalism which is indirectly the biggest cause of climate destruction.
Be the difference.
One can hope of a different world, I try to make actions that help change the world. I hope reading all this has inspired you to give. Hell, if it even slightly radicalized you to think about how charity isn’t the solution to all problems and make you engage in social change that’s good too. This post is both a call to give to charity, and also critique the practice of charity. I’m not saying don’t give, I want you to, but also when you do give, make sure you know where and who you’re giving to. Make sure you know the roots of the problems you’re giving to. An inspired person can make anything happen. and I hope I’ve inspired you to give and make change.
Anyways, till the next time.
JA.
