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Sparkle (0)
Most of my charitable efforts have been animal related. I've been active in animal rescue, especially that of bully breeds like Boxers and Pit Bulls, for years now and my girls have been attending rescue events with me since birth. For me, dogs are so much easier to be giving towards - I'm definitely an animal person and I always have been. Recently, I've been trying to get more active in charities relating to people, mainly children.
My daughters and I have a yearly tradition of going to Target and choosing two toys to donate to the local Toys for Tots drive. I've explained the previous two years as best I could that the gifts go to children that have parents that can't afford to buy them Christmas presents and that we'd be making two little children very happy on Christmas, just as they are when they get to open their gifts. They always seemed satiated by my explanation and last year on Christmas morning The Bella even asked if the children we'd bought presents for were as happy as she was, after she'd opened her last gift.
I've tried to make them cognizant of how lucky they are in many ways and have taken different opportunities to show them. When I gave a bit of money to the homeless man at the intersection, or when we saw a woman pushing a shopping cart down the side of the road in the blazing heat, I pointed out to them how lucky they were to have a home and a car and good food and people that love them. I showed them how there are so many people in the world that don't have those things.
When we stopped eating popular brands of chocolate, opting not to support to child slavery that sustains cocoa production for most farms on the Ivory Coast of Africa, I sat them on my lap and read them stories and showed them photos of little boys not much older than they were being forced to leave their families and work all day everyday. They aren't happy about the fact that there's less chocolate in their lives (Fair Trade Organic Slave Trade-Free Chocolate is expensive!). They don't quite 'get it' yet, but as they grow, they seem to understand better.
With The Bella being 5 and Goobie 3 years old now, I felt that this year they were old enough to be given a more detailed lesson about those less fortunate than us. A month or so ago, I decided to take a more active approach, sitting them down and talking to them about the different struggles and problems that can come from being unable to work or having more children than you can provide for, or just hitting a rough patch.
We talked and my oldest asked questions while the baby sat listening politely but really paying no attention to what was being said. The Bella wanted to know why there were people in the world with less money than others and why every child didn't have a daddy that was able to buy them nice things with his paychecks, and wanted to know if they could borrow her daddy to buy presents and her mommy to cook them good food to eat. My answers weren't very good, but I did my best to answer and figured that I should act instead of talk this year.
A few weeks ago we visited a local domestic violence shelter. With us we had a brand new dollhouse we'd been given to review, and a huge box full of gently used toys along with a few new ones. It wasn't where the victims are housed (that was a secret location) but it was where they met with their advocates and attorneys, and the first stop to getting assistance. When we arrived there were a half dozen children in the playroom, all of them belonging to a woman who sat in the lobby, face covered in dried tears and bruises. She looked at us, eyes swollen almost completely shut, and she smiled crookedly. I smiled back and said hello but my girls hid behind my legs. Goobie asked me in that impossible child whisper that's even louder than her normal tone: "What happened to her?" I stuttered for a second, hesitant as to what to say in front of her, but she answered for me: "A very bad man did this to me." Goobie didn't ask anymore questions, only frowned and drew back
