Charity = arrogance
So the holiday storms are finally starting to clear. mamaM and littleE are still visiting folks, and i'm home and dreading going back to school.
My grinchiness is not yet run through me and I am still grumping about christmas charity. Some very nice and well-intentioned folks i know spent a good deal of time and energy raising money to buy kids presents this year. A worthy idea on the surface, but it has been irritating me for weeks now, and i haven't the backbone to tactfully say it to anyone's face.
Charity sucks.
I wish that i knew what the intention of the project was... To buy gifts for poor children? To buy gifts for any children? To buy gifts children wanted and otherwise might not get? To buy gifts for a classroom that the teacher needs?
Buying presents for a whole classroom of kids has the benefit of not stigmatizing anyone. Which is kind. But...
When you are poor, getting toys that you don't want and didn't ask for is insulting. There is nothing worse than sitting hungry in a cold house, and knowing that someone spent good money on a toy and wrapping paper that you could have spent on food or heat.
No one is so cruel to let their kid go without christmas presents if they can do anything about it. People will instead give their kids pop instead of milk for a while to save money, go without food themselves - and lots else - to make sure that their kid has a gift.
Unless you get a list from each kid, they are also not likely to get the gift they actually want. And even then.... last year i had to argue for hours with some kindly elves that the "total kombat infantry camo kit" was not the "art supplies" that one 12 year old girly-girl had requested, and no, it would not do.
People know best how to spend money on their own family. If you can raise $900, why not give it out to parents of first-graders as cash. If you can't handle people having that much autonomy, give it to the teachers, and have them buy things for the classroom. If you still can't handle that, give it to a food bank to prepare healthy food boxes so that parents can feed their children nutritious meals for a few days, and use the money they saved to buy the toys their kids actually want.
Maybe i'm just bitter because our immediate family christmas presents consisted of wrapping up random junk from the living room for one another, and $3 in stuff for littleE from value village. We also accepted our first "christmas hamper" this year. (Which was the most exciting thing we got by far. We got enough oats for two weeks of hot cereal, and juice!)
I go back and forth about where we are financially. On one hand, we really are trying to get by on far less than $15000/year. Our house is cold. We take free showers in public places, and neither of us has a single pair of pants without holes. At the same time, we own our house, we have supportive relatives, and people keep telling me that i will be making money in a couple of years.
I am well aware that none of that is certain... I owe more than $150000, if anything were to happen that i couldn't finish school, i'm really only qualified to be a camp counsellor or a telemarketer. School is funny that way, we blur the line between actual and potential money and achievement. Because i (probably) will make money, i have money.
Maybe that's why my classmates believe that we are "fortunate", and kids in St. Henri are "less fortunate"...
There but for the grace of God go i...
My grinchiness is not yet run through me and I am still grumping about christmas charity. Some very nice and well-intentioned folks i know spent a good deal of time and energy raising money to buy kids presents this year. A worthy idea on the surface, but it has been irritating me for weeks now, and i haven't the backbone to tactfully say it to anyone's face.
Charity sucks.
I wish that i knew what the intention of the project was... To buy gifts for poor children? To buy gifts for any children? To buy gifts children wanted and otherwise might not get? To buy gifts for a classroom that the teacher needs?
Buying presents for a whole classroom of kids has the benefit of not stigmatizing anyone. Which is kind. But...
When you are poor, getting toys that you don't want and didn't ask for is insulting. There is nothing worse than sitting hungry in a cold house, and knowing that someone spent good money on a toy and wrapping paper that you could have spent on food or heat.
No one is so cruel to let their kid go without christmas presents if they can do anything about it. People will instead give their kids pop instead of milk for a while to save money, go without food themselves - and lots else - to make sure that their kid has a gift.
Unless you get a list from each kid, they are also not likely to get the gift they actually want. And even then.... last year i had to argue for hours with some kindly elves that the "total kombat infantry camo kit" was not the "art supplies" that one 12 year old girly-girl had requested, and no, it would not do.
People know best how to spend money on their own family. If you can raise $900, why not give it out to parents of first-graders as cash. If you can't handle people having that much autonomy, give it to the teachers, and have them buy things for the classroom. If you still can't handle that, give it to a food bank to prepare healthy food boxes so that parents can feed their children nutritious meals for a few days, and use the money they saved to buy the toys their kids actually want.
Maybe i'm just bitter because our immediate family christmas presents consisted of wrapping up random junk from the living room for one another, and $3 in stuff for littleE from value village. We also accepted our first "christmas hamper" this year. (Which was the most exciting thing we got by far. We got enough oats for two weeks of hot cereal, and juice!)
I go back and forth about where we are financially. On one hand, we really are trying to get by on far less than $15000/year. Our house is cold. We take free showers in public places, and neither of us has a single pair of pants without holes. At the same time, we own our house, we have supportive relatives, and people keep telling me that i will be making money in a couple of years.
I am well aware that none of that is certain... I owe more than $150000, if anything were to happen that i couldn't finish school, i'm really only qualified to be a camp counsellor or a telemarketer. School is funny that way, we blur the line between actual and potential money and achievement. Because i (probably) will make money, i have money.
Maybe that's why my classmates believe that we are "fortunate", and kids in St. Henri are "less fortunate"...
There but for the grace of God go i...
posted by lothyn at 2.1.06
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