The Year of Giving Dangerously

I’ve noticed a change this holiday season and I think it’s significant.

People are making the decision to forego presents for themselves and instead are asking friends and family to donate to charities who distribute aid to the poor.

I have no idea what the numbers are, but based on my own experience it seems significant.

The first time I learned of this type of giving was the English organization Send a Cow. I had been staying in England for a few months while working on the book and in the run-up to Christmas I noticed the charity’s solicitations. To me it was the most radical charity I’d ever encountered, a truly mind-expanding organization.

There is a reason cows are sacred in Hindu mythology — their life and health-giving properties are almost unmatched (with the possible exception of their meat, but I’m talking about living cows here, not dead ones.) From their manure to their milk — all are profoundly life-giving, as biodynamic farmers in the West know first-hand. If you’re curious about how far this can be taken, check out the ayurvedic practice of panchakavya (also known as panchagavya).

This was an charity approach that made profound sense to me. The usual model of aid in the West is only to give if much of the aid can come back home. This broke that pattern and gave families a tool — a living, breathing tool — which offered the very real hope of a better life through better nutrition and self-sustainability.

And this is what makes these charities dangerous. This is freedom at it’s most basic.

And this isn’t the Red Cross or United Way — enormous organizations with massive overhead diluting the effects of donations. These are lean operations harnessing the power of the web for positive change.

Somehow in my return to the States and the rush to finish the book, Send A Cow had slipped out of my mind. Being a British charity, I never investigated the possibility of myself contributing as an American.

But now, at the tail end of 2007, the year that micro-finance has hit the big time, I’m seeing not only a huge increase in the numbers of these sorts of charities, but also in the people donating to them (again, anecdotally).

Mohammed Unis winning the nobel prize may have kick-started it, cluing people in to what micro-finance was and the benefits that it — and other similar direct-action charities — could bring. But the momentum is picking up and I think this holiday season could very well be the watershed.

Websites like kiva.org have hit the mainstream, and now I’m seeing a flurry of them: ChangingThePresent.org and GlobalGiving.org as the two most prominent examples. If you want to give, there is no better time to directly affect another’s life, no matter how far away.

The internet’s blessings never cease to amaze me.

Where would we be without it? It’s unthinkable, even if one wanted to.

I don’t.

If you know of more charities like this, please share!

TAGS: charity > donate > donations > holiday giving > Send a Cow