May I please?

How many times have you heard on the subway, the street, the T.V. people asking for you to donate something? There's the guilt trip: "with just 10 cents a day this little girl can go to school", the stab to the heart: "won't you help this child have something to eat today?", the constant reminder that you have more than some others do.

It's real though, we are all surrounded by people that have less, suffer more and are in dire need of basic needs. It is a reality of our society and as soon as you live in what many would consider comfort you think of it. The problem is that most of us who feel like we could do something, realize that our little something will not even move a grain of sand in this desert of misery. Why? because most of what we give or might give goes to some big organization that is overlooking the distribution of it all. Not really their fault, after all we live in a capitalistic society.

But there is - and shoot me for being, yet again, an education advocate - one that goes to the core of things: the education of children.
www.donorschoose.org is done by teachers that need materials for their classrooms. They'll state exactly what they need, exactly what project they needed it for. You'll see something like "crayons", "pens", etc... it is actually heartbreaking some of the things they list as their "needs".
Give people. This is our future we're investing in...