Giving Time

With the holiday season, the season of giving, upon us, I have giving on my mind. And perhaps so do the newspapers. While reading a November 24th article in the Dallas Morning News over Thanksgiving break, I was reminded about how giving one’s time can be more effective than giving money:

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100007979&docId=l:1309953954&start=5

This article reports on how one marketing business donates one out of every six weekends to helping market nonprofit organizations. Services that would cost these organizations almost half a million dollars in funds are being given away. Over half of the company’s employees, this article reports, have donated their time for at least one weekend to help out. It’s incredible that these people are donating their time and services to help nonprofit organizations, and what’s more, what they are doing is the equivalent of giving half a million dollars to these organizations, and probably much more if you take into consideration how many funds are being attracted by the organizations’ new marketing strategies, which the employees might have a hard time coming up with if they were just trying to donate hard cash.

Giving one’s time and talents might not always be as helpful as that of these marketing gurus, but it provides inspiration on how we can each use our talents to help those in need. If you have a talent for sewing, you can make quilts for the battered women’s shelter. If you like cooking, soup kitchens and Meals on Wheels can also use some more help. If you like building things, any number of organizations can use your talent. If all you can give is your time, nursing homes and assisted living centers always appreciate it when people come to play games or just help out with the residents. Even just making Thanksgiving or Christmas cards in your spare time can really brighten the day of someone in a nursing home or in the hospital. Now, all we have to do is keep it up during the part of the year that isn’t the holidays. :)

The Pledge

In a special section of the NYT published on November 11, Stephanie Strom reports on something in the philanthropic world that has come to be known simply as “the pledge.” 40 multimillionaires and billionaires have committed to giving at least half of their wealth away:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/giving/11PLEDGE.html?pagewanted=all

There have been many critics of the effort, which is headed by the Gates’ and Warren Buffet, especially in light of the recent public scrutiny of how some wealthy used their donations to influence politics in recent elections, and some have noted the several of the pledges are to multigenerational trusts (whateverthat means) instead of immediate philanthropic work. However, the important thing, I think, is that they are giving. Politics aside, the Bible teaches us that all Christians, and in particular those who have an abundance of wealth, have a duty to give to those in need.

It is inspiring, and very noble, of these people to give away so much of what they have worked hard their whole lives to earn. I cannot imagine working myself to the bone around the clock, as many do to succeed in the business world, and then just give away what I have earned the hard way, to people whom I am not even sure work as hard as I do. Giving is hard, and I think that everyone should learn from these people’s example. Not that I would recommend everyone give half of what they have away (after all, only having half of my savings account would make it harder than it already is to pay for school), but after all, God has promised that he will provide. If we trust in Him, I think we will find that we can do without a lot more than we think, and that there are many other people out there who can use what we might not need.

There's the poor, and then there's the Roma

In class a few weeks back, we learned about the injunction in the Bible for Christians to help the poor. This isn’t a commandment, but it certainly isn’t an option. Throughout the Old and New Testaments (In particular, Proverbs, Leviticus, and the Gospels come to mind), Christians are reminded of their duty to help those in need. In Leviticus, farmers are told to leave some of their crop for the poor and the alien, a process called gleaning. In Proverbs, this call is so important that God promises to make comfortable the lives of those who give to the poor – He will provide for the righteous, and especially for those who give to those in need.

This brings me to a subject that seems far away from my dorm room in Texas, but is still very important: the Roma. In an article published in the NYT this past September 17, Suzanne Daley reports on the current movements of the Roma throughout Europe. With the advent of the European Union and the “lessening” of borders between countries, the Roma have begun migrating from places they have traditionally lived – Eastern Europe and Romania – to the more affluent Western Europe. Unfortunately, the majority of the Roma live below poverty level, and have been known to beg and steal in whichever country they are living in. So, Western Europe has not taken kindly to them becoming their neighbors. Of particular note is the situation in France, where they are being singled out for deportation, some critics claim.

My question is, what should the Christian response be? The Roma have for centuries been living at the poverty level, and have a reputation for living in slums, not getting a good education, and in general not being of much benefit to where they are living. But what sort of help are they getting? Everyone foists the problem off on Romania, their homeland, which provides little if no help in providing proper education, or ways of rising above the poverty level. Shouldn’t it be everyone’s duty, though, to help them, regardless of where they are from? But what if they have been given help (admittedly, I don’t know much of their history, but I assume they have been given help before) for centuries and nothing has been getting better, is it the givers’ problem, or the receivers’? Should Christians not help the deservedly poor? Is anyone deservedly poor? Lots of questions…

Wal-Mart

Sorry, it's been a while. This semester has seemed to run away with all of my free time, and I'm just now getting to the "interesting articles" pile beside my bed. The first one I'd like to talk about is more of a tangent off of another article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/business/11shipping.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=wal-mart&st=cse

On November 11, the New York Times featured an article about Wal-Mart initiating an aggressive move: offering free shipping on all online purchases. This might be fine for such a huge corporation, but this may mean hard times for smaller companies who rely on shipping costs to help them stay in the black. Being forced to lower or cut out shipping costs can mean failure for many online companies.

Regardless of the implications this move has on fair business practices (but I'm not a business major, so it might be fair to force other businesses into the ground, I don't know), I'd like to talk about Wal-Mart's business practices in general. I honestly can't think of how what Wal-Mart does is ethical. They buy goods at lower-than-market price overseas, which might sound like it would be good for foreign economies, but once the supplier they buy goods from starts raising the prices on them, Wal-Mart turns to another competitor that needs their business so badly that they are willing to sell for exorbitantly low prices:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

Closer to home, we all know how the introduction of a Wal-Mart to a community spells death for other small businesses in the area. While shoppers might like to shop at a store they know is local, tight budgets and low bank accounts force buyers to go to where they can get the best prices: Wal-Mart.

I'm not saying that people who can't afford to buy their items elsewhere are under the obligation to avoid Wal-Mart, and I'm not saying that I haven't bought from them myself, being a low-income college student. But I think that maybe we should try more to go to other stores. For example, while H-E-B isn't that small of a store, it at least guarantees that it's goods are more local, and their prices are fairly competitive with those of Wal-Mart's.