Last Friday was jeans day at work. Every year on the first Friday in October, work has a benefit for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. For a $5 donation, you get a pin and are able to wear jeans. (I get Hawkeyeop one too, whether he wants one or not.) The first time I heard the term “Breast Cancer” I was probably 10 years old or so. I didn’t know what the term meant, but I had the feeling that I was going to have that some day. I’m 28 now, and I know what it means, but I still can’t get rid of that feeling.
After work that day, I had an appointment to get my hair cut. The last time I got my hair cut was more than two years ago. Each time I get it cut, I have at least 10 inches taken/chopped/hacked off--the minimum donation required by Locks of Love. Sometime in the next days (or months, I'm a procrastinator after all) I'll mail it off to their office in Florida. The first time I donated, I had decided to have a lot of hair cut off because I just wanted a change. It works pretty well for me in general because by the time I’m ready to have it cut off, it’s almost long enough to donate anyway.
After I graduated college, I was pretty depressed. I just couldn’t find a job. I was over qualified or under qualified. I knew I had to do something big and drastic, but I had no idea what. Then there was Katrina, so I signed up to volunteer with the Red Cross.
I spent a few weeks helping to run a group that took hot meals to people without power. I saw the best and worst of people and the organization.
My group lived in the church where we based the operation out of. We slept in Sunday School classrooms, I think there were 10 women in that one room. Some wonderful parishioners let us come to their house to shower. We also used the gym at an abandoned school–no one was allowed to go by themselves to that place. It was spooky. There were also awful people. Some were rude, threatening even. Some of our guys were kicked out of a town while trying to pass out food to people in a parking lot; the people there just didn’t want us around.
The Red Cross can be an amazing group. It mobilizes people from all over the country to step in to help whenever there’s a disaster. But it’s far from perfect. We were to receive 4 semi trailers of needed food. When it got to us, we found it spoiled, no good. Someone didn’t set the refrigeration unit on the trailer to a cold enough temperature. Thousands of dollars in food wasted.
There are so many good causes out there. So, Mumpers, I want to know what you do, have you done or do you want to do for charity? What organizations are worth your time, stuff or money?
P.S. Thank you for reading my first thread.
(Old, but good, chestnut.)
