Christmas Fund Drive

[Bruce]

Brock.... the important thing here is to actually SPEND some money to help 'them' (aka THOSE PEOPLE), not that you send money back to the USA. How much you want to spend?

Got an extra 1400p lying around collecting dust? Go buy a sack of rice (900 for 1/2 sack) and deliver it to the barangay captain office in a poor area and then TELL everyone hanging around the outside of the office FREE RICE! And then step back and watch the fun begin....

What I do, because I 'gots people' is that I bought the standard cheap scale (nooo, not a drug scale!) and some green plastic bags and the people weigh out the rice into 1 kilo bags and then hand out to the pedicab drivers (no taxis in Catbalogan)

Just do 'something'!

[GregZ]

Would love to if you have anyway to pay other than PayPal ...... ???????????

You can donate with a credit card. No PayPal account required. So this will do it unless you are specifically trying to keep PayPal from getting anything out of the transaction OR you don't have a credit card.

On the screen below look to the left - where I circled - "Don't have a PayPal account?" and click the Continue link.

Edited December 9, 2012 by GregZ

[GregZ]

Go buy a sack of rice (900 for 1/2 sack) and deliver it to the barangay captain office in a poor area and then TELL everyone hanging around the outside of the office FREE RICE! And then step back and watch the fun begin....

I like the thought here but I don't believe this is a good idea myself. Unless you know the 'right' thing will happen when you drop it off. That rice could end up anywhere. I do believe in helping out some folks though and will let the 'experts' take care of it.

DONATION MADE :540: Merry Christmas

[Bruce]

Of course the rice will end up 'anywhere'. Which is why you have people see you donate it and tell those poor people outside the office that free rice was donated. Like flies to sh.... er... ah, Like ants to honey! If you give they will come!

The barangay captain will tell everyone that HE is responsible for the Kano making the donation and that everyone should vote for him again in the next election. The sack of rice will be divided and given out rapidly. Which is the intended purpost.

Now, I want to have you guys / naysayers rethink your statement about the 'right' thing happening with the rice. These statements are simply a barrier to making a donation. A rationalization as to why you should not make a donation. So the donation is not made. THIS is the problem. Multiply the naysayers by many thousands of others.

We can't fix everything nor can we control every aspect of every donation. But unless the donation is made, then NOTHING gets done! No one benefits. So, if you can rethink your position on the donation, any donation, and accept that there may be some theft or diversion of any donation made anywhere.... Then make that donation anyway, SOME PEOPLE will still benefit.

Look at it like this. If in the US you donate to the salvation army, red cross or similar big name charity, only a SMALL % of your donation may actually be used to directly help someone. The rest is for salaries, rents, utilities and the like. If donors actually knew what happened to their money they may then seek out specific charities to donate to that better use the money for the intended purpose of the donor.

One of the biggest 'frauds?' I am aware of in my local area is a charity for women called women in distress. It is huge and takes in MILLIONS locally and is is actually run as a business. Sure they have some counselors (grad students for free credit) and they have a shelter building (more rules than you can count) and from a distance it appears that it is doing what it is supposed to do. But in reality, it does the minimum it has to do to keep the donations rolling in. Further, the local court system has judges, one of which has a wife who sits on the Board for that charity, and when they hear a domestic violence case, they often force the guilty person to make a donation to the charity.

My point is that if the naysayers 'refuse to play' because things are not 100% the way you want, then multiply your position by thousands of others, and you can see that very little is done. At least with my charity, I take no salary and take no money out of the donations. Other than paypal's 2.5% and the ATM fee in Phils, 100% of all donations are used as intended. Not too many charities can make that honest statement.

So whatever part of Phils you are in, locate the poor barangay with in a reasonable distance and then make some sort of donation! Everylittle bit helps.

THANKS FOR THE DONATIION GREG!

Edited December 10, 2012 by Bruce

[Jollygoodfellow]

DONATION MADE Merry Christmas

I do believe that Greg has made a donation Bruce. :)

[Bruce]

Yes Greg did! Added to donations by Roy and Jollygoodfellow and others whom I can not remember without looking it up, it is adding up. What is important to me at least as these guys who made a donation actually followed through and DID IT. Overcame the naysayers and made a decision and followed through.

So far I have about 4,500p + in Christmas donations. So here is the issue. Since Christmas if for the kids and they eat rice every day, buying them rice as a gift seems to be a little bland. So I am thinking of either a little party at Jollibees. Or perhaps 200-250p in a clothing allowance for each kid. And then there are some elderly widows who come around asking for food so they might be responsible enough to simply get 200p as a gift

They love Jollibees as they are not usually allowed inside since they are poor squatters with no money anyway. But food is quickly eaten then gone. Clothes at least will last for a while.

On my first trip there and the first time I took kids into Jollibees to eat, I was really shocked that some kids refused to come in without real coaching and once in they acted like the security guard would have beaten them at any minute. After a week there, they were acting like kids again at Jollibees. But for me to see that some of these kids were 10 and had never been inside the (only) Jollibees was a suprise. In the US, we just do not have sqatters, but also we don't have kids afraid to go into a restaurant.

In any event, the woman who runs the day to day operations will make a decision (who is naughty and who is nice) and work out a budget and then make a list of people 'deserving' and take it from there.

It is interesting in that since I am a foreigner, they all look alike and tell similar stories of poverty. But to the local people running the charity, who know the squatters personally, it is a set of standards to be met. The father is a drunk and the mother gambles so in this case, the children need to be taken shopping as the parents cannot be given money. In that family the older brother does drugs and beats up mom for money so any gifts have to be very quietly given. In the other family the older kids will take from the younger kids....

What to me seems like a really easy thing.... give out the money / gifts / food to the poor is actually quite an effort to make sure the 'proper' deserving kids actually get their gifts. But they manage to get it done. Without their effort... it would be a mess.

Speaking of donations... Here is a biggie! Ah what the hell, I should start another topic for that, so look for VEGETABLES!

Thanks again to Greg, Roy, his Jollyness and others who made an effort to bring at least a small slice of 'better' to Xmas foe the poor.!

Edited December 10, 2012 by Bruce

[Bil Brock]

Wow! Catbalogan. I've been there, spent 9 days once, yes there are pedicab drivers all over. It is a relativley quiet town because of that, which is nice. My kids school here in Cebu City is having a day for indigent neighborhood children & that is where our donations are going. The school people will know way better than I how to distribute the donations they get. Again, good luck with your good program

[Bruce]

The best part is that you and your kids are doing 'something' instead of sitting back and waiting for the OTHER GUY to do something. Also teaches kids to give something back too.

I have been in Manila and Cebu (Cebu Grand, The Maxwell and that big casino hotel where the US Embassy is) and Catbalogan. I am not a sexpat (wild Manila) and I need no night life and while I do miss the Lemon Grass..... Catbalogan seems to be a good fit for me. Since the Philippines is really big on a small scale... I had to make a decision as to where I wanted to stay. Catbalogan seems to be a good choice for me.

[GregZ]

***1: Now, I want to have you guys / naysayers rethink your statement about the 'right' thing happening with the rice. These statements are simply a barrier to making a donation. A rationalization as to why you should not make a donation. So the donation is not made. THIS is the problem.

***2: At least with my charity, I take no salary and take no money out of the donations. Other than paypal's 2.5% and the ATM fee in Phils, 100% of all donations are used as intended. Not too many charities can make that honest statement.

***1: I made my donation to your charity BECAUSE of the statement I made earlier as a rationalization to give money to the professionals (YOUR CHARITY) for the BEST chance of it doing some GOOD. :dance: YOU may be able to pull off the rice at the captain's office... I could NOT. I liked the tricycle rice program idea though... may do that one myself for some folks in the mountains outside of CDO (Cagayan de Oro) while adding a couple of canned goods.

***2: This is why I not only made a donation, but I posted your charitie's facebook page on my personal facebook wall AND also on my game player wall that has 900 friends. It may bring you nothing, but I put it out there and repeated this fact of 100% charitable use. Who knows what may happen. The answer is always NO unless you ask the question. :thumbsup:

MERRY CHRISTMAS :36_6_3[1]: <--- I don't mean anything by this guy... he just looked cool.

[Okieboy]

Pizza hut here in the Philippines takes donations for the children in the Philippines the money is spent on food and such, last year the customers donated P 63 million piso to help, not many doing any better, and it is Government licenses and approved.