There was man here who used to sell the local newspaper, and he’d walk in and out of the cars as they approached a rather busy intersection. He was struck and killed last Tuesday.
I just want you to know that somebody cares about you, that’s all.
Thank you, I do appreciate it. The moral/emotional support I’ve received has been invaluable.
What, you don’t want them to sell candy to raise money for their “basketball team”? 
‘A boy of maybe 12 wheels up on a red BMX, pulls out a roll of singles, and waves it under Chris’s nose. “Baby hustler,” Chris calls him. “These kids ride the train asking for money for their basketball camp or whatever. There is no basketball camp, but there is this bike over here.” The boy smiles, suddenly shy, and hides behind Chris’s broad back, peeking over his shoulder and fanning out the wad of bills.’
I really feel bad for the kids I see with the boxes of candy. They’re dragging themselves around, usually looking exhausted and with arms sore from holding the boxes of sun-warmed Butterfingers and Baby Ruths. I have a couple of problems with this whole strategy. First, sun-warmed candy bars are hardly appealing except to the most confirmed chocolate/sugar addict. I don’t see them as much as I used to, but when I did I always used to wonder why they couldn’t sell something different.
Second, I wonder what business the organizers of these things have sending these kids out to do this? Sure, it teaches them to endure what must be an extremely tedious several hours on a hot summer day. Presumably that builds character, but I think teaching these kids useful skills or other educational content would be far more worthwhile in the long run. As far as I’m concerned, if teenagers like this aren’t fully engaged and motivated in their education, and performing at grade level to the best of their ability, they have no business wandering around proffering candy to strangers. The fact that somebody sends them out selling, IMO, indicates that something is seriously wrong somewhere. Either the schools or their communities have failed them.
I probably should have put “basketball program” in quotes, because I strongly suspected it was a scam of some sort. Particularly since it was a weekday afternoon and the kids were young enough that they should have been in school.
I do often give money to beggars though, at least change if I have it handy. I’m not a devout Christian, but I’ve always remembered the passage where Jesus says (more or less) “That you fed and clothed the poor, so you did the same for Me…”. I try to remember that; even now while unemployed I am so much better off than many that I see.
Addressing the first point I raised above, why not have them sell something else? Candles. Gourmet coffee. Maybe the charities could work out a deal where they buy gift cards at a discount from local businesses, like coffeehouses (not necessarily Starbucks), and then have the kids sell them at face value to people. If local merchants are willing to deal in “scrip” from school charities, it sounds like other, similar approaches might work.
And oh yeah…at least give the kids wheeled coolers to lug their stock around in, assuming it’s perishable.
In Bangkok, it’s straight out of Dickens. Beggars are assigned spots and must turn in all of their takings at the end of the day to their minders. Any legitimate beggar would get the bejesus beaten out of him at best, for infringing on territory. And they seem to go in monthly themes. One month it will be small children with puppies, the next it will be women with babies, etc. And the babies are often rented; there have been some arrests of people caught renting their babies out to beggar organizations. And the beggars are often not even Thai; many are Cambodian and specially brought in. Sometimes they’re rounded up and sent back across the border. One time they were even all flown to Phnom Penh, which must have been a real treat – their first airplane ride, and free!
Some people never wonder just how it is a beggar with no arms and no legs manages to place himself in the middle of the raised walkway crossing the street. And some of these “armless” beggars are actually contortionists who have folded their arms up under their shirt behind them; some are skilled, but with others it’s laughingly obvious. I recall one lady in Siam Square I used to see every day for a number of years when we lived nearby. Day in and day out, she sported the same fake leg wound on her designated spot. I never gave her any money, but we got to be on nodding terms.
Never ever give money to street beggars in Bangkok. We’ve had several editorials exhorting people not to.
If they were actually collecting for a charity, yes that does sound like a good idea.
However, in NYC at least, if you see a group of 16-22 year old guys with boxes of candy on the subway or street corner, it’s always a scam. There is no charity or team.
The ones i always find sort of disturbing are the ones who tell you they are just doing it to make money to keep off of the streets. The basic assumption being that they would be criminals if we don’t buy their candy. Which seems like both a threat, and the idea that there is something shameful about trying to make a buck.
Really? Please submit your list of a million ideas to the Department of Education. They seem to have run out of ideas for generating funds. So have school boards, state and local governments and local schools. Classroom teachers often buy supplies when there is no money.
True, but that’s nothing new. We sold fruitcakes and peppermint sticks to fund junior and senior activities in 1960.
What really pissed me off was having to sell candy from my classroom each year. My class was constantly being interrupted by students from other classes wanting to buy candy. One teacher that I know donated $200 to the school with the understanding that she had met her obligation and wouldn’t have to sell any candy.
Back to the OP: I can understand not wanting to have anyone in the street collecting funds. That is offensive. But my general rule is that if I have two pennies to rub together, someone can always have one of them if the story makes sense.
Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in South Dakota is now at 85% unemployment.
Ok, not a million, but there are more than one or two fundraising ideas that are better than standing in the street begging for money. When I was in extra-curricular activities in school, we sold candy or did walk-a-thon type deals where you asked for pledges. And sometimes we got donations from local businesses. I don’t see why the kids from the high school can’t do something like that rather than begging in the street.
Try to find a way to get your district slapped with a deseg order and then submit bullshit (but still relatively working) plans every few years in order to get federal funding? (Well… that’s where 25% of MY school district’s funding comes from at least)
Anyway I recall when I was like, 7 my parents did some Chirstmas time Salvation Army er… “begging.” It was in Wal-Mart and iirc we had to get approved by the company to stand in their doorways and do this (well, by that I mean there are two sets of automatic doors and we were in that area with the vending machines between the outside and the store itself), in order to avoid people faking stuff like this for profit. But if I remember we also weren’t supposed to pester people, meaning just ring the bell now and then say a general “help the needy” (or equivilent) to noone in particular. Not that I did much, my little kid attention span was too low, I just went to the electronics section and looked aorund for half of the time, most of this comes from the instructions my parents went over beforehand and what I observed for all 50 minutes before I got bored and ran off + 11.5 years of memory distortion.
If someone told me that up front I might actually give them a dollar just for presumed honesty.
In Chicago proper we have Streetwise vendors - genuine homeless people selling papers to make some money. THOSE people I give money to - and if they hassle you there’s somewhere to call because one of the rules is no harassing/abusing people.
I can be generous, but right now I have few resources for myself and even when I’m well off I’m careful where my money goes.
On our last trip to Hawaii three years ago, we saw something like that in Honolulu. At a bus stop at Ala Moana Mall, a homeless man was hawking copies of a small newspaper put out by the homeless. I like that idea.
I was going to pit this exact thing. There is one intersection on my way to work where people do this. The only problem is that this is a horrible intersection. Because it is near a school and the highway, it gets a lot of traffic. Added to that is the fact that every once in a while the light will be really short. People fly through that like no one’s business. A week ago or so, some kids were out there for some sort of school thing. A few days later the police were there, cars parked and lights flashing.
“Oh, maybe there was an accident.” I said. No. They were collecting money themselves.
The next day, just as I was going past, I saw a family walking up. They were pulling a cooler and would likely be selling bottled water.
This was all in a short period of time, at one intersection. There is a little memorial for a person that was killed there in the past. And somehow, people still do this. I’ve seen this happen all over the place. Usually it is just people asking for money, but sometimes they are selling Krispy Kreme, Chick-fil-A, or something. Not only does it endanger the people, it also slows down traffic. I will never give anything to these people for all of those reasons.
At the door to Mom’s parish church there’s often beggars. Some I know, like this alcoholic old man (probably not as old as he looks) who has been a fixture of the area for a couple of years. Recently, there’s a man and woman who, while they don’t talk to each other, both stink and stink very similarly and communicate by gestures - really, in a country where one of the national sports is a card game where victory can depend on seeing your partner lick his lips (it’s called mus), that’s not very discreet. I’d mentioned to Mom that those two didn’t strike me as “real beggars”: real ones talk to each other and try to be as clean as possible, so that even when dirty don’t smell like moldy clothes. They may occasionally smell like sweat or alcohol, but nothing as rancid as this pair.
A few weeks after they’d started begging there, I saw them getting on a brand-new 4x4; I’ve seen them driving around in normal clothes during the week. Those two need charity like I need a bigger ass and it irks me that they’re basically stealing money from those who need it for real.
Doing something inefficient just to create a job is a bad idea, and poor people giving more to charity than non-poor is just not true.