Holiday: Tiny Box Tim Day

[ysabetwordsmith]

Tiny Box Tim Day is a holiday for helping others, celebrated on June 28.  Plan ahead for what you want to do.  Donate cash, goods, time, etc. to worthy causes.  Support tends to peak in winter and trough in summer, so help fill the gap!

Some categories that maximize your bang-for-buck:

1) Things only you can do.  If you write, do, or otherwise make unique things that would help other people then pitch in what you can.  It'll stand out from the replicable stuff.

2) Give cash to charities that buy in bulk. They can get great deals that multiple the effects of your donation.  

3) Choose charities with a "pass it on" clause.  These usually dispense something that can be taught and/or multiplied.  One of my favorites is Heifer International, which does both.  It gives livestock and lessons in animal husbandry to people in developing nations, and when the animals reproduce, some of the offspring get passed on to other families in need.

4) Look for the overlooked.  Here I favor Native American organizations.  In addition to the intertribal ones, many reservations have a fund for fuel, food, health care, or other urgent needs.  I recommend that you look for the tribe nearest you, now or historically, and pay them some rent (if you live on Turtle Island).  If you have kin on a reservation, if you have written about a tribe, or your have some other connection to a tribe, you can turn there too.  See Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation -- I've chipped in for their fuel oil drives because it's fucking freezing in winter -- but recently we've gotten catalogs from the Southwest Indian Foundation.

Comments

Heifer International

[ng_moonmoth]

They had been on our list for a while, until we encountered an article including some trustworthy references and links to reports from places where Heifer gifts had been sent. (This was some years ago, so I doubt it's readily findable.) The upshot was that they were sending the animals without considering the constraints and needs imposed by the places they were being sent, and being more focused on commercial aspects than the subsistence aspects that were often more needed. Frex, it's unlikely that sending a cow to a place where water is scarce and grass basically nonexistent, or chickens to a place where one lacks the materials to build an enclosed nighttime shelter from local predators, will end well. And while being able to buy things outside one's community with the fruits of one's labor is desirable, having enough food to stay alive is always going to come first.

There was also more focus at the time than we were comfortable with on introducing developed-world agricultural practice rather than leveraging local agricultural practice. So we reluctantly crossed them off our list. Any signs things have gotten better since?

[kellan_the_tabby]

I just started sending a bit of money every month to the Navajo Water Project, which sets Navajo families up with running water. Something like 30% of homes on the nation STILL don't have running water, which is kind of terrible any time but extra-specially right now. It'd be a good way to pay rent for anyone of non-Indigenous ancestry living on or near Diné lands.

Go you!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I had known that many of the southwest reservations don't have full utilities. (It's a problem on many reservations, but worse there.) I had't known about that charity, so thanks!

When I'm poking racists, I like to point out that the "civilizing" argument was a complete lie. They never had any intention of giving conquered people access to the "benefits of civilization" -- which is easily proved by pointing out the utter squalor in which they still live today in reservations and ghettos. >_