6 Degrees Of Me

Today is the day that I have come to look forward to for a number of reasons. Today is payday. Getting paid is an obviously plus for the hours that I put in at work but it also great because it affords me the opportunity to give.

I know that I mentioned, when I first started donating, that I would eventually settle on two charities that I resonated with the most. As it were, I like finding new ones to donate to every week.

This week I chose the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. Also, I received a refund from my state taxes, and I took 10% out of that check, so this donation was larger than the others I’ve made. Why TASK? Well the college that I graduated from, formerly Trenton State College, located in sunny Ewing, NJ, was about a 15 minute drive from Trenton. I spent some time in the city, in those four years. At the time I was young and just wanted to have fun. The problems of poverty in the city were clear as day to me but I was “too busy doing my own thing”. I could have donated directly to my college but they don’t need the money like some of the folks in Trenton do. What I give is a pretty paltry sum but I have no doubt that the combination of gifts that TASK receives does a lot of good.

I decided on CCFA as my second charity after my stay at Barnabus Pavillion. I mentioned that Ramya’s best friend’s father was in the hospital at the same time as me. He’s actually still there. He’s had colitis for some time and has had some recent complications. What I just learned today is that crohn’s and colitis are separate but related diseases. I also thought that colitis was curable until I researched it a bit.

There was a kid named Bobbie Pearlman from my junior high that had Crohn’s. I remember that his face was extremely swollen and thinking back then, that Crohn’s made your face swell up. It wasn’t until I probed my mother about it that I found out that the swelling was due to the meds Bobbie was taking.

March 29th is here and gone. I’m looking forward to April 12th.

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This post comes about two weeks after the event. Since I experienced a life changing morphine induced haze over the past week, I wasn’t in any shape to write this. I went out for some drinks and dinner with friends from work. As I was walking up to the first bar to meet my buddy Charlie, he called me on my cellie.

You’ll never guess who’s standing in front of the bar

I reached the bar in about 2 minutes and immediately pulled out my phone to snap a shot:

It was kind of dark so my picture is kind of fuzzy. Plus, one second before I snapped it, some guy with a huge noggin stepped in my way. So I tried again:

There he is… the greatest President of the modern era. I miss you slick Willie!

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I didn’t get the opportunity to donate to charity on the scheduled Thursday which means that I’m donating a week late and I’ll be donating again next Thursday. I broke away from my tradition of giving away money as a gift this time around but I will explain that in more detail.

This week I’ve picked Kiva as my organization of choice. Kiva offers microloans to individuals in developing nations to help those individuals start their own businesses. Ramya’s cousin Divya had mentioned the organization to her and she passed on a bit of the information to me:

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

I’d heard about microloans via an NPR radio broadcast. There was a guy in India that started out years ago by initially lending some money to a couple of people. Word got around and he got popular quick. The one surprising thing was that, for lenders, microloanees have the lowest rate of default on their loans.

So I decided to lend funds to Sesilia Erick . She’s a young lady from Tanzania. When I clicked on her profile and read her story I was compelled to send her the needed funds. The site works by showing the amount of $$ that a loan is requested for. Then willing individuals provide funds to fulfill that amount and the loan is tendered.

I understand that this is a loan and not a gift. I tried to look for ways to gift the money but that isn’t how microloans work. Also, this isn’t like a credit card loan. There isn’t any interest which I will make during the time my money is being repaid. So instead of collecting the money once the loan is repaid, I’ll just lend it to someone else and keep on doing so.

I stuck with the idea of donating to two places this time. But instead of choosing a different organization, I decided to donate to Kiva directly.

Why not help someone help themselves? Check out more about Kiva.

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