The Art of Giving- II
Sometimes I think the best job in the world. Besides being a grants administrator, I get to deal with energetic young people who want to help their world. And I get to give away merchandise from KIDS (Kids in Distressed Situations). A pretty good job.
One of the perks of running a scholarship program is you get to watch the kids grow up. Sometimes they come back to you with how their lives have changed . Lindsay Hyde, a former winner of a react Take Action Scholarship, would e-mail once every couple of months to tell me what she was doing in her community and at Harvard. In January she told me that the program she started, Strong Women, Strong Girls, had expanded to nine different sites in Boston. Lindsay had been pretty busy with this program since this was just the beginning of her third semester and her course load seemed unbelievable. So I wondered how she would handle on more level for her 'girls' if I threw it at her.
My suggestion that the girls she worked with learn how to give back to the community by planning on distributing some donations form KIDS was eagerly accepted. "This is exactly the type of thing we have been looking for!" she told me in an e-mail. What followed were many more e-mails and conversations on how we were going to arrange it.
Of course I remember being a college student and trying to save the world at the same time. I know it is possible to plan boycotts and protests, tutor kids and have a part time job and still pass all your classes when you are 20. You feel invincible. But I wanted to make this as easy for Lindsay and her fellow student leaders as possible. They deal with girl 12 and under, high energy already and at that age where they think they know more than everyone else. So when I got a small donation I decided this was the perfect trial for this venture.
When I say a small donation, I mean six boxes of jeans and tops. Nothing like the 1500 pieces of clothing I got in my office in December of last year. I repacked everything and sent half of it to a place in the south that I had donated to before. The other half went to Lindsay's group.
This would be the first challenge for these girls. KIDS only gives away new merchandise, so imagine how they would feel going through a box of name brand jeans that they could fit and wear. These are not baby clothes, easy to give away when you are 12 and fashion conscience. These are things that you would like to have in your own closet. So the first challenge for these young ladies is sharing what you think should be yours. Imagine how proud they will be in the end when they can say they were part of a giving program- and they didn't give to themselves.
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