The prettiest whistles won't wrestle the thistles undone.
I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough.
Anybody have thoughts on the right charities to give money to? I am thinking of the ACT alliance which is basically a joint Christian relief thing.
The only reason that I'm thinking about going with them is that one of the member constituencies, Episcopal Relief and Development is known for its ongoing relationships with people in the dioceses who are close to the ground.
Can anyone recommend good organizations with an established presence in Pakistan?
I donated a pathetically small sum to the Oxfam Pakistan appeal and my credit card fraud department contacted me to check that my card wasn't being misused. What's that all about?
3.3: People I trust have been recommending this organization, for one.
Some general guidelines for giving in humanitarian causes.
1. The org has experience in the geographic area.
2. The org has experience in the subject matter area, providing food, building shelter, child protection, etc.
3. Give cash, not items unless you are absolutely sure the donated items will do more good than harm. If you aren't sure, stick to donating money.
Two bloggers that write at length about this are here and here.
Every time we give cash we're on their mailing list for the next several years, getting requests every month to the point where I feel like they spent half our donation sending junk mail back to us.
One thing we've done is given $1000 (essentially the first year's tax credit) to planned parenthood each time we had another kid. Buying indulgences, I guess. That got us on their super fancy literature mailing list, though.
It appears I've unintentionally made you all feel guilty. Not my intent! Not my intent!
You didn't make me feel guilty, Stanley. I've been thinking about giving something, and I thought that I'd use this thread as an opportunity to solicit advice.
9: Well, that plus Stormcrow getting the song reference right away? I feel vindicated. Or something.
I used to worry about "metal fatigue" until somebody explained it to me.
You don't know from fatigues.
I'm surprised nosflow hasn't made use of "donor fatigue" in reference to Stanley's mom. Sorry if I ruined it for you, neb!
Once I was in Germany and got döner fatigue.
BG, I almost always give to Doctors Without Borders in these situations if they've got ground ops. They've been in Pakistan for 20+ years.
You (I) might also consider the Red Crescent -- it would be nice if there were a decent stream of U.S. donations to them.
No more masturbating to Jack Horkheimer. Or Michael Been of The Call fame (more recently of his son's band Black Motor Rebelcycle Club) whom I knew only from doing the music for Light Sleeper.
16: I remember The Call. "Let the Day Begin" was good.
They were America's answer to The Alarm!
If it weren't for one guy on my floor freshman year, I'd have never heard of them. I can't remember his name, but his girlfriend had been a semi-successful beauty pageant contestant at the state level.
16: Black Motor Rebelcycle Club
Rev. Spooner would have been proud--it works well. A recent BRMC tune that caught my ear.
What would be nice is more robust long-term international support for the CERF, so that we don't have to have massive individual donor drives every time a major flood or earthquake happens. Charity is fine as far as it goes but is a short-term solution only, as attention spans are generally too short to address long-term problems efficiently.
21: It's sad that this was my first google result, while this came in fifth place.
Oh. I thought this was the meet-up thread.
So you arent suffering from wanting to meet-up with me?!?!
Mostly, I'm suffering from wanting to eat tortilla española and that artichoke dish, but I'm sure it'll be nice to see you, too.
22: Not that the first one isn't important, too. Otherwise how will dogs ever be able to look up?
