Poverty – Blog Action Day
October 15, 2008 by Katelyn Thomas
Filed under Simpler Thinking
Poverty. It is a terrible thing. As thrifty people, many of us aren’t rolling in dough, but hopefully none of my readers go to bed hungry or live out of their cars. Hopefully, you all have fresh water to drink and bathe in. Hopefully, your children can get the medical care they need.
The more I focus on wasting less, the more I feel troubled at the waste all around me. That cardboard box from a new appliance the guy up the street just folded into his trash can? A person in a warmer climate would have moved into it. That lunch that a mom threw away after her child took two bites of a hamburger? A whole family in a nation suffering from famine would have shared it and felt incredibly blessed. Obviously, I can’t change the way other people live, but I can look for more ways to reduce waste in my own home and perhaps I can free up some cash while I’m doing it to help someone living in poverty.
Even if I don’t manage to find extra cash to donate, there are some things I am doing to help fight poverty and I’d like to ask you to join me. Did you know that you can simply click on a link through The Hunger Site every day to help feed someone who is starving? You can find this tip and 87 other ways to fight poverty at the Blog Action Day site.
Photo by Piotr Ciuchta/Stock Exchange
I just clicked–how easy is that? I’ve also been thinking along these lines…our church has a food pantry with donation accepted every week, and I try to buy one thing on each grocery trip to take in. No, we’re not rolling in cash–but we have plenty to eat. I can only imagine how hard it is for families that don’t have the means to feed their children without help, and I know the need is growing right now. If we can all do these little things, what a huge difference it will make!
Thanks Andrea! Another thing I’ve started doing is taking clothing donations to a local mission that has a food bank and a kitchen to feed a hot meal to the hungry several times a month. The money they make on my donations goes right into the mouths of my neighbors who are struggling to feed their families. It is a really small organization run by volunteers, so there isn’t all the money for overhead that places like Goodwill deal with.