Not long ago, I came across a quote from a teenage girl: 'It's easy to make a difference in the world. There's so much needs doing'.
Whilst financial giving is only one of a myriad ways to take action, that's what this page is devoted to: some of my favourite ways in which to make a difference financially - though they don't all require you to actually give money (see Click-to-Give).
I'd love to introduce you to the following sites. In just a few seconds a day or with a modest sum of money, it's possible to make a big difference in the world.
Kiva - a brilliant way to support fellow craftspeople
Kiva is a micro-financing organisation. Once you’ve signed up, you can choose to lend small amounts of money - usually $25 at a time (around £15 at current exchange rates) - to individuals or small groups of people in all parts of the world who need a loan to further their small businesses. These are people who would not normally qualify for or be able to access loans from larger banks and financial institutions.
You choose to whom you lend, so you can pick a business or country you‘re interested in. It’s a fantastic way of supporting other craftspeople and artisans. And the best thing about Kiva is that, once your money has been paid back to you, you can re-invest that same initial sum in another business. So the same few dollars go on doing good again and again and again over many years.
Click-to-Give - financial giving that costs nothing
Clicking-to-give doesn’t even cost you any money! The financial donation in this case is made by advertisers on the website. And the more often people click, the more money is raised. It takes only seconds each day to click onto the site, and then to click on each of the areas (across the top) that you want to support.
So even when you’re stony-broke, there’s no reason to hold back on giving. When the rest of your day has gone pear-shaped or you feel you have nothing to give the world, just click to give.
Jessie's Fund - my favourite charity
When I was training to be an instrumental teacher, we were required to video ourselves at work. A fellow student chose to film herself in a music therapy session with a severely disabled child. Her video - the work she was doing and its impact on the small life before her - moved everyone in the room to tears.
A few months later, I was invited to play my harp at a music workshop organised for severely handicapped children and their carers. The participants were bussed in from specialist schools across the region. These were some of the most disadvantaged individuals in our society: children, most of them in wheelchairs, most unable to communicate by speech, most with only limited control over the actions and movements of their own bodies. There must have been upwards of 100 such children in the room, with an equal number of carers - one for each child. But as I began to play, the noisy babble which had been present in the place all afternoon ceased completely. You could truly have heard a pin drop, as everyone present fell under the spell of the soft, dreamy strings.
It was then that I realised how extraordinarily powerful music can be. It not only has the power to calm, to comfort, to heal.......but can reach the depths of a person in a way nothing else can. And through music therapy, children who have no other constructive way to express themselves to the world about them can begin to establish some sort of channel of communication.
Jessie’s Fund is a remarkable small charity which, through music therapy, works with children such as those mentioned above, as well as terminally ill children in hospices up and down the UK. Born out of tragedy in the lives of the musicians who founded the organisation, it has gone on to do untold good over the years in many, many other lives.
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