Give One. Get One.

This is an interesting idea that just came my way. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, but I wanted to share the information.

It's a philanthropy project titled "Give One. Get One." You buy a $399 laptop computer, and they donate one to a child in a 3rd world country. Actually, you donate a laptop to a child in a 3rd world country, and they'll give you another one for yourself for free. The deadline for purchase/donation is December 31st.


It's an interesting idea. Here's the link.

I am definitely intrigued by the concept. On the outset, it seems like a wonderful philanthropy project. The mission is an important one---"to empower the children of developing countries to learn"---but the method---"by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child" may or may not be flawed. I'm certainly not poo-pooing the idea, I just have some questions and I'm not yet finding the answers.

My most important concern is whether or not the method will actually achieve the goal. Will these laptops empower school-age children around the world? particularly children in impoverished countries where there's not even running water let alone electricity and batteries to operate laptops? Or are there better, more cost-efficient, more intelligent, and culturally-appropriate ways to achieve the same goal? And how does this method translate across the globe? Clearly a laptop donation will be viewed differently depending on where you live. Not all cultural groups are going to view the device, the technology, the gift, in the same way.

You might guess, and hope, that the wonderful people who put this project together have already thought about my question. It is a seriously impressive team of researchers, techies, academicians, and such, from respected institutions like MIT and Harvard. However, well-intentioned, intelligent, thoughtful people have made such mistakes before.

I remember a story told to me when I was a graduate student in anthropology. My advisor, let's call her LA, had done her PhD field research in anthropology in Zambia. In the small farming community where she did her research, an international development aid agency had decided to help local farmers increase their crop production. This aid agency was filled with intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated, do-gooders. They weren't stupid, and they had the alphabet soup after their names to prove it. And importantly, they were well-intentioned. They believed that if they helped this community improve their crop yield that less people would starve. Greater crop production equals more food and more money.

It was a good goal. But their method? Well, their method was a bit flawed.

What did they do?

They donated tractors. Large pieces of machinery designed to help farmers tend their fields.

What LA observed over the two years she lived there, was that these tractors were virtually never used in the fields. Instead, they were being used as taxicabs. Yep, big old, gas-guzzling, expensive tractors were being used to transport people from point A to point B. And the farmers/taxi drivers who were driving the tractors were charging their passengers a fare to do it. Apparently, the local people thought this was better use of the equipment than using the tractors in their fields. And I'm sure they believed this was a better income-generator, or at least knew that it was a more immediate income generator than waiting until harvest for some extra crops and cash.

My point is that we may be intelligent. We may be educated. We may believe we are doing a good thing. But sometimes our Western ideas do not translate well in other places.

This may be the case with the laptops. But it may not be. I'm hoping it's not.

In any case, these are some interesting laptops. Check them out here.

Philanthropy Thursday

I gave blood today. I haven't donated blood in ages. I had a relatively recent bad experience that led me to avoid it for years. But today, I decided to suck it up and do it again. And even though I'm still a bit lightheaded from the experience, it felt good. According to the woman at the donation site, I am considered a universal donor since I have O negative blood type. Only 6% of the population can claim this.

I went home and googled it and of course, what she told me is not entirely true. O negatives used to be considered universal donors (we can donate to Os, As, Bs, and ABs, both positive and negative) but now there are more sophisticated methods of matching blood types so that a donor's and recipient's blood can be more closely matched for compatibility. But my husband says that if a trauma patient comes into the ER, they automatically give him O negative blood since there's really not time to "type" him.

So, it's still mostly true and it doesn't matter much to me anyway. It just felt good to finally donate again.

I've donated blood many times in my life. Most of the time, it has gone just fine. But I have had a few bad experiences with blood donation. One time, I fainted. I literally stood up, attempted to approach the cookies and juice table, swooned, and fell on my doofa. Not pretty. Another time, after waiting in line forever, I was turned away because I was under 110 pounds (I wish I had that problem now!). And the last time I tried before today, I was turned away because within whatever time frame I had lived in Europe and could have possibly been exposed to mad cow disease.

It was that last time that did me in for the next five years. This was in 2002 and they turned me away because I had lived in Europe in the 80's---yes, the 1980's.

Here's the story. J was a small baby, maybe 5 or 6 months old and still nursing furiously. O would have been just about 2. We lived in Tucson at the time where it was always extremely hot and we were new to the area and still adjusting to the heat. Also, and this makes for a much better story, I had a navy blue car with no air conditioning (it's true, I swear) and anyone who's ever been to Phoenix or Tucson knows a dark colored car, especially one with no a/c, is not a good idea.


Anyway, I was listening to the radio and heard that all of southern Arizona was suffering a horrible blood shortage. They also said that the most important donors were those with O negative blood type, and since I knew I had O negative blood, I decided I ought to do my civic duty and go out and donate.


So I loaded up the kids and headed out. Back then, loading up the kids was no easy task for me. Yeah, yeah, I was more overwhelmed with motherhood than some, I'm sure, but still. I don't remember every detail of the story---it wasn't that traumatizing. But I'm sure it went something like this---

I looked up the location of the nearest blood donation center in the phone book. Then I dressed both girls, changed both of their diapers (yes, two in diapers at the same time), and nursed J. And then probably changed J's diaper again, because that's just the way it works, right?


Then I went out into the scorching heat and loaded the double jogger into the back of my car. I squirted down both car seats with a water bottle, carried the kids into the car, and buckled them in. We drove about 20 minutes, without air conditioning, to the nearest blood donation site, located at the mall. I parked, covered my windshield with a sun reflector, unloaded the double stroller, loaded each child into the stroller, and then covered their car seats with white towels that I always kept in the car. Then I pushed them to the site only to find that they were located on the 2nd floor and there were only stairs available where we stood. I hiked through the mall to find an elevator, took it up, and walked back to the donation site. Then I waited in line. And my kids? Well, J probably nursed again, I'm sure, and I probably spent a lot of energy trying to keep O from contaminating all of the colorful, plastic, sterile, blood-collecting supplies.

When it was finally my turn, a woman asked me a million questions while my children waited patiently (ha ha) in their stroller. When we got to the question about my time in Europe, she said I had been "deferred"---meaning, you may not give blood today. Deflated and upset, I pushed the stroller back to the elevator and then out to my car. I took each of the two kids out of the stroller, removed the white towels, spritzed their car seats with water, and buckled them in. I folded the stroller and loaded it into my car. Then drove the 20 minutes back to my house, in the heat with no a/c, and unloaded the kids (one of whom was now screaming to nurse again) and stroller from the car. We went back into the house having not accomplished a damn thing.


Not a damn thing. Sigh. The story of my life as a stay-at-home mom to two small children.


So that's why it took me about 5 years to get up the nerve to try again. And today, I accomplished something. A small thing, yes, but something.

Philanthropy Thursday

Our girls have been sharing a room since J was born five and a half years ago. We finally decided it was time for each of them to have their own rooms. They have been asking for a while, especially O, our oldest. We agreed that our introverted girl, who now spends long days at school engaged in extroverted activities, and who comes home to an entirely extroverted family, needed some private space to recharge.

So last Saturday, I tackled the project myself while my hubby was at work. I really didn't think it would be that complicated. I just needed to move a king sized bed, plus end table, lamps, towels, sheets and blankets out of the guest room. Then I needed to remove a huge cabinet, a wood butcher block table, bookshelves plus books, stools, and a gazillion totes of craft materials out of my study/craft room. Should have been easy, yes?

Then, of course, I had to not only relocate everything from the girls' room into their two new rooms, but also had to divide up everything they have been mostly sharing for the last 5 and a half years---train table, small table and chairs, mini-kitchen, 4 sets of book/toy shelves, 2 twin beds, 2 canopies, a gazillion toys and games, even more stuffed animals and blankets and doll clothes, plus 2 dressers and tons of clothes hanging in their closets. Piece of cake!

It took FOREVER. Absolutely forever. Three full days, actually. My kids were blue in the face by the end. They wanted to kill me every time I said, "Okay, time to sit down and divide up the [insert category, something like "dress-up clothes"]. In the process, however, I got to sort through all of their stuff like you can only do when you move. I filled only 2 white kitchen sized bags full of trash, but I filled 3 huge, contractor-sized, black garbage bags full of stuff to donate to charity.

Yesterday, I dropped it all off at Goodwill. We are feeling much lighter around here!

Just hope for me that we don't have one of those huge meltdowns a month or so from now when one of the girls realizes that something absolutely essential to her existence is missing.

I'm sure they'll both forget all about those precious toys, right?

Philanthropy Thursday

Okay, okay, okay, I know I missed it again! What is it today? Friday? Maybe it's still Thursday night as I write this. Yes! I think it is. Whew!

Again, I got caught up in my own selfish existence. Did I get a chance to sit down with my daughter today and discuss what cause she'd like to support? Did I ask either of my daughters what good deeds they might like to perform today?

No, I did not. I wish I could claim that it was because I am a slacker. Oh, those wonderful slacker moms. The enviable slackers. What I wouldn't give to be a slacker. Sigh.

But let's see.....I did donate $25 today to MoveOn.org partly because I'm just in a pissy mood. I'm sick and tired of the politics in our country. I'm sick and tired of the fact that our troops are not yet home and I'm absolutely sick and tired of people like Bill Maher---someone who has the audacity to compare public breastfeeding to public masturbation, someone who I thought was on our side, someone who I enjoy watching, turn out to be a misogynist pig. I can't stand it and I'm sick and f-ing tired! (sorry to Mary Alice---really, I love that word---maybe I should have said "I'm sick and ferociously tired?")

Okay, so 25 bucks isn't enough. I know it's disgustingly not enough. I get it. But I'm in such a pissy mood that I have no idea whether or not this money will go to the "right place." Should I really have donated more than that?

Then I spend half the day (or so it seems) on the phone with my BIL who just had a restraining order placed on him by his ex-girlfriend. Oh my stars. The details would put you in your grave.

Then my poor hubby, my awesome, thoughtful and sensitive hubby has a horrible day at work. And that topic absolutely deserves it's own post.

And y'all wonder why I'm in such a pissy mood? Maybe I'll have an epiphany at 2AM. If I do, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be up writing about it.

Philanthropy Thursday

Okay, so I know it's not Thursday anymore. But this week I've had more to do than any other week in recent memory. It was stressful!

Let's see.....we raised a barn (more on that later), I met with the school psychologist and special ed teacher to discuss my child (that's a year's worth of stress in one day right there). We had sod delivered and my hubby, who normally works ridiculous hours as it is, had to put in an extremely complicated sprinkler system and do it all in record time since the sod would die if he didn't. We had the BIL situation which is way complicated---can barely even go into it. We had an unexpected, but very pleasant, out of town visitor, and then expected visitors. We had the first 2nd grade parent night. I had my first exam in my new class, and even taking a class at all is new to me since I haven't done anything like it in the last 7 years. Of course, we had all the normal stuff---school, dance, playdates, etc.

I had planned to let my youngest daughter pick a philanthropy project, but it just didn't happen this week. So instead I did two things that I really think should count. Really. They should.

First, I finally, finally met those neighbors I talked about in last week's post. Now granted I didn't bring them a welcome basket, or cookies or even my phone number, but still! I met them, didn't I? Give me a break!


My second good deed on Thursday is a little more complicated. But it boils down to a few things---restraint, patience, picking up a bird and delivering it to safety, staying enough involved to show you care but not enough that you lose your mind, learning to text on my phone, lots of hugs and smiles, and playing the good cop when you really didn't want to play at all.

Sigh. I love Thursdays.

Philanthropy Thursday

My good friend, Jen, over at http://www.lottakids.blogspot.com/ is a genius. A sensitive, do-something-about-it, genius. She and several other bloggers are starting a thing they are calling Philanthropy Thursdays. A day a month, the last Thursday of the month, when we are all to count our blessings and give to those in need. She's selling her rock, her gorgeous rock from the early years of her marriage (her awesome hubby gave her a new, bigger one, recently) on eBay and the money is going straight to the New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. You gotta get over to her site, find the link to her sale on eBay, and catch the spirit. The giving spirit, as they say, and it ain't even Christmas.

It's got me wondering...hmm...besides bidding on Jen's ring, what can I do? What should I be doing? We all get so caught up in our own selfish existences, that we forget there is real tragedy out there. Real suffering. And real needs. Let's all put our heads together and come up with something good. Even if it's something small.

Thanks everyone!