It's Tuesday! DO SOMETHING!

Hey all!

Tuesday again, and I'm actually around to do my Do Something segment. I've been seeing a lot of ads for fundraising walks lately, so I thought they were the thing to focus on today. After all, a fundraising walk increases the sense of community within a culture, increases the walkers' health and well-being, and raises funds for important health-related causes. Here's a few near and dear to my heart:

• March of Dimes March for Babies
  The loss of an infant or unborn child is devastating for the entire family, and the discovery that a living child has a birth defect that will challenge her for the rest of her life is equally tragic. All too often, however, miscarriages, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths are swept under the rug, and families raising children with birth defects are left to fend for themselves. Help the parents of all of these children by donating to a run in your area or by running yourself and raising money for the cause. March of Dimes started as a push to cure polio, but today, its reach is far wider. Infant and prenatal care affects us all, whether we have children or not.
• The Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk
  For years, the Susan G. Komen Foundation for a Cure has been doing fundraising walks to provide treatment for underserved communities and to fund research into new treatments and possible cures for breast cancer. Again, whether you know someone with breast cancer or not, it is a disease that the society as a whole is impacted by every day, monetarily, spiritually, and socially. And the chance to walk 60 miles in 3 days with a bunch of crazy cancer survivors? Priceless!
• American Lung Association Stair Climbs
  Got a free Sunday morning? Why not hike to the top of the Hancock Center in Chicago? Or the AON Center in LA? All to benefit a good cause, of course--lung disease research. No, the ALA isn't all about lung cancer. It's about asthma (which is heavily impacted by indoor air conditions and outdoor pollution) and allergies (which are impacted by chemical exposure and environmental damage) and various other lung diseases which are afflicting a greater and greater number of people every year. As a former smoker, I'm kind of attached to the ALA--they may have to save me from my past sins one day, so I'd better give them money now.
• AIDS Marathon
  The AIDS Marathon foundation will train you to run a marathon (or a half-marathon) and give you a chance to raise money for AIDS research and treatment at the same time. I admit I've never thought of running a marathon, and likely never will, but the idea, if you're game, is to train for it and run it for the AIDS research community.
• The Walk to Defeat ALS
  The ALS Association raises money for research into a cure for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease). This disease is a particular cause for a friend of mine, so I sock away a little money in my budget to donate to the walk every year.

So, that's my list for the day. I have to set up my March for Babies site soon and start hitting all my friends up for a little money. It's amazing how much you can raise just by asking for five or ten dollars from a bunch of coworkers and friends.

Give it a try--you might earn a free t-shirt and sunny day of walking with a whole bunch of newly-met friends.

Because Really, What's Better than a Fuzzy Animal?

So, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and no doubt there will be a million stuffed animals given out in an attempt to make girlfriends and wives and even boyfriends and husbands feel loved and special. The cute factor can't be beat.

And, you know, yay for that. I'm all for cute! But there are real animals out there, too. So, in honor of our fuzzy friends (and enemies--and those who aren't fuzzy at all, in fact), I give you 5 things you can do to help an animal...

1. Adopt an animal from your local zoo.
No, I don't mean take one home, I mean donate money to help defray the costs of feeding and caring for the animal (mine this year is a meerkat!). This usually doesn't cost a huge amount, and you sometimes get a stuffed animal or something to remind you of your gift. Two things, though, from someone who, admittedly, has really mixed feelings about zoos:

• make sure the price of the adoption is considerably more than the probable price of the swag they send you, because there's nothing more annoying than realizing that, of the $100 you just donated, $50 of it went to the adorable stuffed animal and tote and framed portrait and everything else they sent you.
• check out the zoo and its history of animal care, animal death, and animal management. Animal management includes partnerships with other zoos for the purpose of preservation, building and enclosure design that helps improve the social and mental well-being of the animals, and psychological work that is done to make sure the animals don't develop zoocosis (think the penguin in Happy Feet).

2. Deliver some food to your local shelter.
One of my cats was extremely ill a couple of years ago, and was put on prescription food. When her health started to improve, she stopped eating the wet prescription food altogether, leaving me with half a case of the stuff. So I dropped by our local no-kill shelter and gave it to them. They couldn't have been more appreciative! Now, with my vet's blessing, I buy a case of that when I bring one of the cats in for medical work and drop the food by the shelter on my way home.

Animal shelters often work on shoestring budgets--and the burden on them is getting worse in this economy, since many people are losing their homes and are being forced to abandon their animals to find places that will rent to them. And animals come in with all kinds of medical conditions that the shelters treat the best way they know how. So maybe think about making it easier for them, if you can, by donating something concrete. Yes, they need money--God knows!--but sometimes what they need, right that moment, is a case of kidney food.

3. Give money to an animal rights group you believe in.
Okay. I admit it--this is a wildly controversial subject for a whole lot of people. Greenpeace, PETA, Sea Shepherd... there are a lot of groups out there who have their supporters and their detractors and I can't tell you who to donate to. I can tell you that places like World Wildlife Fund and the others mentioned are out there for the business of saving habitats and animals. And that's a very good thing. Just remember, the money isn't worth it if you don't agree with the group's philosophy.

4. Give time to your local animal groups.
This is a very inexpensive way of giving back. Often it's what I used to call muck work (yes, I occasionally mucked stalls at a stables). If you're not into cleaning out litter boxes and shoveling dog runs, find out if there's something else you can volunteer to do. Many places are happy to have people who have experience with smaller infants or have had kittens or puppies before--it takes very little to train these people up to take care of the newborn animals they sometimes acquire.

5. Go walk a dog!
If you happen to have a neighbor who's maybe not around as much as he could be or who has trouble getting around at all, offer to walk his dog once in a while. If you have a neighbor with mobility or agility problems who happens to have a cat, ask if he'd like some help with the more bendy-stretchy things involved in pet care. If you've got a car and your neighbor doesn't, think about offering to drive him and his pet to the vet for physicals. Having an animal has been shown to be very beneficial to the human spirit (and blood pressure), but it's sometimes hard on the knees. Granted, for us introverts, this might be asking too much, but if you're outgoing enough and willing, you might find a very good friend--and the owner might learn to like you, too!

So, that's all! Have a great weekend--a great three-day-weekend if you're one of those lucky buggers who has Monday off!

It's Tuesday! DO SOMETHING!

Yes, I'm actually starting a feature! A "segment," if you will. Every Tuesday (hopefully), I'll be posting a few ideas of things you can do to help the world. Some will be letter-writing campaigns or donation opportunities and some will be little things that you can do at home to try to step a bit more lightly.

Here's the list for this week:

• Call on the International Community to Help Protect the People of the Democratic Republic of Congo
  The situation in Congo is dire--send a message to the international community that the time to act is now. You need to sign up as a member of Amnesty International to send the letter, but AI is a wonderful source of information globally and well worth joining. The call to action has recipients named from the previous administration here in the US, but it will actually get to the proper people. (And don't worry, AI won't send you a million emails--or indeed, any at all if that's your wish.)
• Do Something Useful with Those Empty Bottles
  If you do have empty water bottles around (try not to, but if you do), there's a great way to reuse them that doesn't involve washing them and drinking out of them again (which may or may not cause more chemicals to leak out of them). Fill them with cold water and stick them in the back of your fridge. Air in a fridge rushes out when you open the door, and the warm air that replaces it has to be chilled all over again, using energy. Cold things, on the other hand, stay cold when you open the door (if you don't leave the door open all day). The more stuff in your fridge, the less air in your fridge, the less your fridge has to work.
• Help Improve Education through Small-Scale Donation
  Because of the lack of public school funding in the US, teachers often end up spending a distressing percentage of their incomes buying simple yet needed supplies for their classrooms. Donors Choose is a website designed to provide targeted funds to targeted classrooms. Teachers write up grant proposals and donors choose which program to give their money to. It's a fantastic way to give a gift to a friend, by the way. My best friend got a donation made in her name to a school in her area, which made it both very personal and very conscious. No gift wrapping, no fuss, no overhead. Just a teacher who now has the books she needed to help further her students' educations.

That's all for today! Have a good one--and do something!

Why is this Mr. Capitalist's job?

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the federal reserve said he was shocked his ideas led to the current economic crisis and said "I still do not understand exactly how it happened."
     Well, let me see if I can give it a shot: Banks bundled mortgages that had been given to people that wouldn't even qualify for jury duty and then sold those, along with credit default swaps which are basically insurance the seller provides to the buyer in case the entity loses value. However, unlike regular insurance, these swaps weren't regulated so they failed to meet any standards of responsible business. Then, when everything collapsed, it spread like an infection, because when people are making money, they don't ask how, they just say "yay!"
     But again, you're the expert.
     --Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live, Weekend Update, 10/25/2008

The global economy is in the tank. Many countries are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and economic depression. Banks are failing left and right. And it's up to us to save it all. That's right, not Americans, my friends, but every single capitalist on this planet.

At least that's what the politicians and many of the pundits seem to be telling us. And because we're trying not to spend, us frugal people are hurting the economy. On the other hand, experts in personal economic security are telling us to save, save, save!

What can you do? Are you hurting the environment by spending tons and tons on things that use up resources--things you don't need and really probably can't afford anyway? Are you hurting the economy by minimizing resource use and not spending what little money your hard work makes you? Why do you have to fix this, and is spending all your money really the way to do it?

Mr. Capitalist has a hard time not spending money. Back in the 80s, when he was young, he got into all kinds of problems with credit card debt and ended up having to go to a credit counselor to get back in the black. Granted, he had to work two jobs all through the 90s to pay off those credit cards, but then he had a nice clean balance sheet to buy a house with his new wife.

When they went to buy that house, of course, the bank preapproved them for a mortgage that was very, very expensive--almost all they could afford at the time. Then, they had a baby and Mrs. Capitalist's father wasn't doing so well and needed a lot of financial help and it all added up. Luckily, the house had an equity line of credit, so Mr. Capitalist didn't worry too much.

Because, you see, he'd been told that we're all supposed to get mortgages we can barely afford and spend more than we have because we're supposed to buy things--that's capitalism. We need to make sure the family has TONS of Christmas presents (whether we celebrate Christmas or not), and then there's always Valentine's Day and Mother's Day and Father's Day and Grandparents' Day--the buying never stops because it's good for the economy!

Except...

Except that now Mr. Capitalist has a car loan and a mortgage and a home equity line of credit and a dozen credit cards and the minimum payments all add up to $5000 a month, but he only makes $4000 a month after taxes, and he never had much of a nestegg to begin with because he was spending like he should be. So suddenly the car is being repossessed and the house is being foreclosed on and the credit cards are in default and three or more banks are carrying "bad debt" because Mr. Capitalist was doing what he was told to do. He was stimulating the economy.

Not to mention the fact that, with his credit ruined he can barely get approved for a rental. His job gets downsized because he works for a company that does business with one of the banks that's carrying Mr. Capitalist's bad debt--you see, the company can't get a loan to cover its expenses while waiting to be paid by clients who can't get loans to cover their expenses because the bank is trying to hold on to what it has while it drowns under bad debt. So Mr. Capitalist goes to the unemployment line and gets his unemployment check--a check that is essentially paying back the loan he and his employer made to the government by paying taxes.

But of course, that money the government got on that loan has already been spent a hundred thousand times over, so they take out another loan to pay Mr. Capitalist, who can't get enough to pay his bills and provide for himself and his family.

This is an exaggerated thumbnail, of course, and doesn't take into account the fact that, at least in the US, the economy has also been severely damaged by the lack of affordable health insurance, which bankrupts hundreds of thousands of people because they either can't get it or have inadequate amounts of it.

It also doesn't take into account the greedy and immoral practices of banks and mortgage companies and futures traders, a great number of whom made up numbers as they went along to try to make the bottom line look good. And then there's the fact that society keeps touting the image of the affluent American, and the government has, until recently, kept trying to convince us that everything will be just fine if we can spend our way out of this.

So, fine. It's not really Mr. Capitalist's fault that the economy is crashing. It's not just because he spent more than he had--and if the economy continues to languish, it's not because he's now saving most of what he makes. But what do we do now? What can each of us do to help get things back on track? I'm not an economist by any means, but for me personally, the following is a good start:

• Spending: still a good idea--but wisely. Don't go into debt to stimulate the economy. Go check out Suze Orman for good tips on staying on budget.
• Saving: still a good idea, too--and remember, as that Fox article I quoted earlier says, paying down debt is saving. (I'm so not advocating listening to Fox News as a general rule, but in this, they're right. Ask Suze Orman; she'll tell you the same thing.) CNN's Money (particularly Money 101) has some good info on smart debt reduction.
• Giving: absolutely crucial. It's crucial for the survival of the idea of society, if not exactly the bottom line. If this world economy comes out the other side of this a stronger one, but leaves five billion people in the dust and ruins? That's not strength. And it's certainly not right. I've listed sites for donations before, but think of calling your local shelter and seeing what they need. There are a frightening number of people in need right now and any little bit helps.
• Learning: takes some time, but is so worth it. Read the newspapers, subscribe to political and economic blogs, check out your government websites (US Executive Branch, US House, US Senate, US Supreme Court) and read up on the bills being debated and the rulings coming down from your courts.
• Doing: hard, but necessary. Write a letter to your congressperson asking him or her to support real solutions for healthcare, call your senator about the current state of scientific funding.
• Thinking: is an often daunting prospect for some reason. There's a big list of things here, and it's hard to figure out what to do when and how. Think about three things every time you make a decision about your money: Am I helping the planet? Am I helping other people? Am I helping my soul?

We can hope all we want, but we have to work to make things happen.

Local Food: "Yeah, I don't really have time to go to the farmer's market."

I've always found that when you feed people good food, the conversation becomes very productive.
--Alice Waters, head chef of Chez Panisse, Berkeley, CA
Find out more about her "Art. Food. Hope." dinner on inauguration eve.

I was down south visiting my sister last year. It was mid-spring and our farmer's markets here in the midwest hadn't quite gotten off the ground yet, owing to the amount of frost still on said ground.

We were driving to lunch one day (we drove to lunch every day--and to dinner) and I looked over the side of the interstate to see a lovely, sprawling, farmer's market occupying the majority of a mall parking lot. Now, this mall wasn't more than a mile or so from my sister's house, and craving some fresh food, given the long hard winter just behind us, I asked casually, "So, how is that farmer's market over there?"

"Yeah," she replied shortly. "I don't really have time to go to the farmer's market." Which pretty much ended the conversation.

Now, I will admit that, growing up, we didn't know anything about farmer's markets. We did have friends who grew some food, and we did know some of those "hippie types" who got their food from somewhere, but for the vast majority of our meals, food was procured from the nearest Safeway.

My sister has a lot of children, so on the one hand, I can see that she finds it easier to keep an eye on them when they're all trapped inside a store. On the other hand, I think the idea of spending an hour or so letting the kids get a look at what grows near you--which, let's face it, doesn't include junk food like potato chips and Twinkies--is a good lesson in how the world works.

But that, I think, requires a mind that thinks the world should work that way, and a fair number of people are very happy with their world in which they can microwave a pizza instead of slaving over a stove for an hour after a hard day at work.

I know exactly what they mean. As I got older, I found that the city we lived in did indeed have a farmer's market. But I never went there. It was in the middle of town, and we lived on the outskirts, and then I'd have to cook, and I was already working a lot of hours, and wasn't farmer's food more expensive anyway, and it was just a pain to get to and... yeah, I didn't really have time for the farmer's market.

Nowadays, living in the middle of fertile land as I do, I love my farmer's markets. I love that I can start getting the freshest, juiciest strawberries and raspberries and blackberries early in the season and enjoy them all year long. I buy twice as much as I need for a week and then freeze half, and it's done a pretty good job of getting this berry junkie through the winter. Though I have to say that I ran out of blackberries in December and broke down and bought some at the store last week. Somewhere between Mexico and me, the taste fell out of the box.

Another great thing about the farmer's market is that, if it's close to your house and you plan everything right, it can be one of the least time-consuming parts of a shopping experience. Once the season starts, we plan all our meals for the week on Saturday and go to the grocery store for things we know we can't get at the farmer's market. Then, on Tuesday, we go to the market that's on the way to the train station (on my way to work), and pick up what we need for the week. Even if we wander the whole thing, it doesn't take more than half an hour. I keep our finds in the fridge at work for the day and schlep it home and voila!

For two people, we rarely need more than one bag, and it rarely costs any more than it would to buy the same stuff at the grocery store. I do find, however, that the connection to the food itself is greater because I picked it up from the farmer him- or herself, so I make sure to use up all the food I buy there, where food from the grocery store already doesn't taste fresh and often goes bad before I can cook it.

Also, the farmers we know don't give me a funny look for bringing a tupperware to protect my berries in transit. :)

That's another plus to a farmer's market: the farmers. I love that one of the women who grows some of the best berries will see me coming and start picking out a pint just for me. Our "apple people" let us pick through and find the ones we want instead of selling us one of the baskets they already have made up for the nonregulars. Our "organic lady," who sells unbelievable garlic and tomatoes and greens, always lets me know which of the tomato strains is the tastiest this week. And of course, she actually knows that, because she and her crew are the ones who picked them and boxed them last night and drove the 70 miles from the farm to sell them to me in a museum parking lot this morning.

There's something comforting in knowing that my food wasn't picked three weeks ago and 1500 miles away. During the tomato contamination scare last year, I didn't have to worry if my tomatoes were from the farms in California that might be in trouble. I knew they were from Wisconsin and hadn't been processed at all--just washed and put in a box.

If you really, really don't have time to go to the farmer's market, there's still a way to get local food--you generally have to pick it up, but it comes in a neat box and you don't have to wander the parking lot. CSAs--community sponsored agriculture groups--are pretty much what the name implies. Community members buy into the farm at the beginning of the season, and receive "shares" of all the produce throughout the season. Since you pay up front before planting is even started, it's a way for the farmer to know that she's going to be able to pay the bills, or if she isn't, exactly how big the shortfall will be.

A whole share will usually feed a family of four every week, and a half share is good for two or three--if you're a single, you can win friends at work by giving away fresh produce or go in on a share with another person. The CSA will likely have a number of places where you can pick up your shares every week--often at your local farmer's market, which is like killing two birds with one stone.

One of the drawbacks of this way of locavoring is that you get whatever they grow. If you don't like zucchini, and the CSA tells you they're growing it, then don't be mad when you've got the little squashes coming out your ears because they had a bumper crop. Likewise, if the season turns overly wet or dry or pestilential, you're likely to get very little return on your investment.

So it's a risk, but because CSAs tend to make their living on the fact that you can have all the vegetables and fruit a family could want, just by buying into one, they'll usually plan a pretty wide variety of plantings to make sure that they keep the land biologically stable and provide enough diversity to keep shareholders coming back. Often, they'll have co-op agreements with local meat, cheese, and egg providers, as well, so occasionally through the year, you'll get bonuses in your boxes.

Interested in loving your local food? If you live in the United States, go check out Local Harvest, which has a very comprehensive listing of farmer's markets and CSAs and grocer/co-ops and such. If you live in Canada, you could start with Chef2Chef, but there doesn't seem to be a listing like Local Harvest in your country. If you know of any other resources for other countries and areas, let me know and I'll post them here in a later post.

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Food for Thought--and Others

• Try buying a CSA share for your local food bank or soup kitchen. Obviously, you'll have to go to the farmer's market and pick it up and take it to the food bank, unless they have other patrons who donate this way, in which case they may go pick it up themselves. It's a great way to make sure that people who need it are getting fresh, healthy food, while saving the environment a little, too!

What exactly is the cost of living?

If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
--Anita Koddick
(Donate a mosquito net at Nothing But Nets and help prevent deaths by malaria)

People talk about the cost of living. They talk a lot about how people the world over are farther in debt than they've ever been, how people are living far beyond their means, how if we all just bought only what we could afford, we would all be stronger and more financially secure.

So let's look at that. For example, here's a typical day's food for me when I eat at home (we aren't factoring in the days I visit Starbuck's in the morning and a local Italian joint for dinner):

• breakfast
  1 cup Special K cereal (approximately 50 cents per serving)
  1/2 cup skim milk (~ 50 cents)
• Snack
  1 apple (organic, so $1)
• Lunch
  Usually a stew of some sort, with meat ($4.50-$8.00, depending on the meat and the vegetables chosen)
  1 cup berries and plain yogurt ($1.50--not a pre-made fruit yogurt, but fresh fruit and nonfat yogurt)
• Snack
  1 oz. chips (50 cents if you buy a bulk bag of chips)
• Dinner
  4 oz. meat ($1, less if it's on sale)
  1 cup green beans ($1 [organic again--pricey])
  1 cup roasted potatoes ($1.50 at least)
• Bed time snack
  1/2 cp. ice cream (50 cents)

Added up, that day's food cost me about $14. Now, I do spend the extra money to buy organic food and I do buy brand names and as you'll notice, I do eat meat (working on that). I suppose if you didn't you could probably buy all of that for about $9. Maybe. If you had the time and place to cook. That also (because I do count calories and buy lowfat foods) all came to 1450 calories, which is a little less than a normal-sized woman my age and height should eat to get her entire day's worth of vitamin and mineral requirements.

I make considerably more than $14 a day. I can very comfortably afford to eat all of that and keep trim and keep money in my pocket. I can easily live within my means and still keep myself nutritionally stable.

The US Census defines a single individual (termed "unrelated individual") living below the poverty line as one who makes just over $10,500 a year. A family of four living below the poverty line makes only twice that, not four times that.

$10,500 a year works out to $28.76 a day over 365 days. So, my meals for an average day would take half of that person's salary if he or she lived here. If you financially slimmed down that menu to $9, it would still take about a third. So, little money left for housing, clothing, anything...

Yes, you can eat more cheaply in a metropolitan city such as this one. You can. The menu can be varied to some extent, but the basic truth is, living within your means when you have little in the way of means is extremely difficult. Let's not talk about the fact that, even if you are in dire financial straights, a single person who actually has a place to rent, will get no more than a maximum of $150 a month in food stamps--half what it would cost to buy all that food. And to get that maximum, you have to beg--because you don't feel like life is hard enough for you already!

Now, I get this information from the US Census and my state's department of human services. I cannot discuss living within your means in the vast areas of the world where people live on less than a dollar a day because I do not know how much things cost there. I couldn't even tell you what it costs to live in New York or LA or Denver. I only know here. And they say you should write what you know, so...

What I can say is that things like soup kitchens and food pantries and aid organizations do a lot more than just give a handout. If you work a minimum wage job (current federal minimum wage in the US is $6.55) for 40 hours a week, you make, after taxes, approximately $10,900.00. Imagine raising two kids and supporting a spouse (who has to be stay at home whether he or she wants to or not because you can't afford the $400.00 a month minimum daycare that one child costs, much less two) on a wage that means one day of 1450 calorie meals for one person eats up a third of your daily income. And remember that that doesn't include days you have to take off because you're sick (because you probably don't have paid days off) or days the company is closed (because you don't have paid holidays) or the days you're not slated to work because the company just can't employ you full time. And if you and your spouse can figure out a way for one of you to work nights and the other days so that the children are taken care of, does that really make things better? Yes, you'll get more food on the table and the chance to keep the table, but is that a marriage anymore if you never see each other?

Aid from social community-based nonprofits help preserve a little dignity and a lot of family--if the aid is available.

So here comes that part I was talking about in my last post where I say there are things you can do.

Educate yourself:

• Read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. It's an interesting experiment of a woman, who normally makes quite a lot, taking off a year to work for minimum wage. (At least she can go back to her paying job and the royalties she makes off her books.)
• Check out the US Census Household and Individual data by subject index--or your own country's census bureau website. It's full of very interesting and eye-opening information.
  

Use yourself:

• Call your local church or look in the phone book for a community food pantry. Ask if they have soup kitchen days you can volunteer at. Ask if they have enough people to help keep the pantry stocked and organized. Ask if you can donate just a couple of hours a week--even less in some places is a help. My local church does a sandwich Sunday the third Sunday of every month, when people can come in between services and make bag lunches and give them out to the homeless and needy people who live around the area. It's a great way to do something to help change things, and it requires about an hour a week of your time.

Use your means:If you have money you can donate, there are tons of people who will help you get it to the right people.

• Share Our Strength is a group devoted to helping feed underfed children in the United States. They even have some fun things like The Great American DineOut, which allows you to raise money for the charity simply by going out to a fine restaurant.
  
• Friends of Man is a charity that is completely volunteer. 100% of the money you donate goes to people who need it to pay their rent or their medicine or their food. Grants are small and specific, so if you are one of those who believe that giving money to charities is bad because the money never makes it to the people who need it, this may be a good place for you to look.
  
• There are tons of other groups who will take your money, of course, but I think a good way to spend that money is in your local community. Even the richest areas have homeless and poor people and people who are struggling to get by. Call your local social support groups, and I'm sure they'll help you figure out how you can help in your local area.

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Meanwhile, here's your human rights link for the day, brought to you by Amnesty International:

• Struggling for Women's Rights in Somalia: A Q&A with Zam Zam Adbullahi, a human rights activist in Somalia, the capacity building officer for Coalition for Grassroots Women Organizations (COGWO), and the Chairperson of the Somali branch of the African network for prevention and Protection of child abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN).