I can't believe that Christmas will soon be here! Looking back over the past twelve months, I feel that it's been a good year for me. My relationship with boyfriend K is going well :-), and we've been on quite a few interesting holidays together.Many years ago now, I agreed with my family that instead of buying each other Christmas presents, we should donate the money to charity instead. And to help with the process, for the last 8 years I've been asking readers for suggestions regarding who do donate money to . This year there's more than £1000 to give away, so as usual, please leave a comment and tell me who you think I should be giving to? The one rule is that because of the way I do my donations, I can only donate to charities that are registered with the UK Charities Commission. I'll make the final decision about who to donate to on Sunday 13th December (or shortly after), so please leave your comments before then. All suggestions welcome :-).
Update 22-Dec-2015: charity donation result.
I've finally got around to making my donations for this year, about a week later than originally planned. But the good news is that I was able to give away more than I had anticipated :-).
Over the years, whenever Kenski has left a comment on my blog, it's always been useful and insightful. So it was no surprise to me that all his charity suggestions seemed very sensible. Consequently I gave £200 to Food Cycle (registered charity number 1134423), £200 to Food Chain (registered charity number 1003014), and £100 to the Ministry of Stories (registered charity number 1138553).
As I said in a comment, the video that the commenter "P" mentioned led me to a web site called Give Well. Unfortunately though, it turns out to be quite American in focus, so a lot of it's suggestions aren't registered charities in the UK. But it did suggest the Against Malaria Foundation which does have charity status in the UK (registered charity number 1105319), so I gave them £500. Another commenter suggested a Shelter (registered charity number 263710), which is a charity for homeless people. For many years I gave to a charity called Crisis which has similar goals, but I have no reason to favour Crisis over Shelter so I gave Shelter £300.
Finally, I gave some money to a couple of my old favourites. As I said last year, I come from a medical family, so I gave £500 to Médecins Sans Frontières (Charity number 1026588). And lastly I supported GMFA (charity number 1076854) again with a donation of £200.
Anyway, a very Happy Christmas to all my readers, wherever you are. Have a good one! GB xxx
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4 comments:
Hey GB, three suggestions based on charity organisations I've been volunteering for (or trying to!) recently. In no particular order:
FoodCycle: taking food which would be wasted from supermarkets and using it to cook free meals for the community's less fortunate.
FoodChain: cooking nutritious food for people living with HIV and providing information on heathy eating plus helping to reduce social isolation.
Ministry of Stories: inspiring young writers (ages 8-18) to create stories and poetry and hence to promote literacy and creativity in the young.
Hi GB,
Last year I provided an infograph in the areas of diseases that would need your help the most.
This year I thought - this Ted Talk may change the way you donate and think about charity before you donate for 2015
https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_singer_the_why_and_how_of_effective_altruism?language=en
Thanks P, interesting video :-). Most of us (including me) could give more, and that seems to be one of the main messages. It also pointed me to the Give Well web site, and that's looks very useful. So I'll take at least one suggestion from there this year.
GB xxx
Please donate to Shelter or any other charity working to eradicate homelessness. It would mean a lot. Thank you.
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