Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [29]
Locks of Love provides more than two hundred hair-pieces a year to children in all fifty states and Canada. Hair is donated by thousands of people from all over America, often by children whose schools take it on as an annual project. Students at a school near my home in New York participate and have a good time doing it, in part because most of them have to grow their hair longer. The minimum hair length Locks of Love accepts is ten inches. If you can grow your hair that long, you can provide a great gift to a deserving child.
Another giving project that could be replicated in every community is the Backpack Club. Despite all the government programs designed to prevent hunger among low-income people, including food stamps, school lunches, and nutrition aid to women and young children, many families with children don’t have enough money to buy groceries and pay their bills. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that almost 12 percent of American households—13.5 million—were unsure of their ability to feed themselves at some point during the year, and about a third of them said at least one family member went hungry at least some of the time. Only 12 percent of the hungry are homeless; 93 percent are citizens; nearly half live in rural or suburban areas; and more than one-third have at least one working adult, often working nights and weekends. Until 2007, we hadn’t raised the minimum wage in a decade. Many of these people just don’t have enough money to pay the rent and utilities, buy gas, and feed their kids, especially if a medical emergency arises.
There are hundreds of local food banks in America that collect food and give it to needy families, often to children at schools who take it home. In 1995, the Arkansas Rice Depot determined that some kids at the Martin Luther King Elementary School in Little Rock were reluctant to take the food, despite their hunger, because they were being teased for being poor. To solve the problem, the depot put the food in backpacks, which could also be filled with books and school supplies.
That’s how the Backpack Club movement started. Today there are at least seventy food banks distributing tens of thousands of backpacks full of food every week, at a cost of $2 to $3, and a weight of seven to ten pounds. The food banks have to raise the money locally for the backpacks and child-specific food. If your community has a Backpack Club, you can support a family for $2 to $3 a week, or work with a participating congregation or civic club to do more. If you don’t have one, you could probably find more than enough support to start a Backpack Club once your neighbors learn about the need and relatively low cost of meeting it. This is one area that ought to be covered by closing the gaps in government support programs, but that hasn’t happened. Serving all those kids going home with their backpacks to get themselves and their families through the weekend is a big reward for stepping into the breach.
WHAT IF YOU WANT to give something useful that you don’t presently own or you have things of value but they have no evident charitable use? Laina Niemi, an American who followed the 2006 Clinton Global Initiative on the Internet, found a good answer to the first question. She committed to buying and donating oral rehydration solution packets to UNICEF to reduce diarrhea-induced death among children in developing countries. The packets cost only 6 cents each.
For people who want to give things away that have value but no charitable purpose, eBay Giving Works has provided a unique solution. You can sell the items on eBay and donate part or all of the final sale price to your chosen nonprofit organization; eBay collects and distributes the donations to the charities and