Last Month of the ??2020 - A Pledge to Do Good

This is it. The final month of 2020. I won't waste time bitching about it. We have been bitching about it every day for the last 335 days.

What can we do in the last 30 days to feel less useless? 

Do the work and find one cause that you feel good giving back to.

And I have a few suggestions.

I do understand though. All the charities out there seem shady. We are unsure of their effectiveness. We don't feel assured that our money would all go to those truly in need. 

But it has been too long. We have been trying to find the "perfect charity" for far too long.

It's just inexcusable that we don't work harder to find a cause to contribute to. I think, if anything, December of 2020 should give us a good enough motivation to announce, "Enough is enough. I am going to choose a cause and give back."

Plus, 2020 is the most appropriate, most easily justified year, in years, to give back, because many are really struggling with endless school closures, layoffs, broken families ...

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Donate to an orphanage/charities that serve children without families. That shouldn't be too hard for you to feel justifiable, right? Still unsure? Visit an orphanage. See it for yourself. Then decide. (My mom volunteers here so I am biased - https://www.motherschoice.org/)
2. Or donate within your community, if you don't feel great about relying charity organisations to disperse your money overseas. This might be the hack you need to overcome the internal doubts you have about donating.
3. Or if you are the kind that needs even more data, visit this site and learn more - https://app.effectivealtruism.org/funds 
4. Or, if you want to donate by volunteering the unique skills of yours, consider timeauction.org.

By the way, volunteering is wonderful. Do know though, more likely than not, the way you are most productive is not cleaning beaches and plucking hair from used soaps. You are most efficient in whatever you are doing, which earns you the most amount of money. Unless you plan to pick up trash regularly and consistently, please focus on what you are most efficient at, earn that money, then give it to someone else who is more efficient in finding resources to clean beaches and pluck human hair. I am adamant about this because I am biased. 

Through my wife, we are running two non-profits. It's hard work. We have volunteers. We love all of them and are forever grateful to their care and dedication. Yet, most of them don't possess the most critical skills we need - teachers, cooks, counsellors, accountants, digital marketers. We can only have so many admins. Freelancers are helpful, but we are running a counsellor network and a school that operate 365 days a year. The administrative time and costs to keep full time organisations afloat with a temp and forever changing workforce are uneconomical. Help us fund the resources we know how to make the most out of.

Finally, I have a pledge to make.?????♂? I am putting my credibility on the line to try to convince you to donate, and donate to us.

Donate to Island Waldorf School: https://iws.edu.hk/about-team/giving/

The goal of our work at the Island Waldorf School is to create affordable and excellent alternative education in Hong Kong. 

We need funds because the path of figuring out an unknown alternative for students in Hong Kong is hard and risky; We need funds because affordability and excellence take effort and resources:

1. We need teachers who can take them camping, farming, who can make dance, school plays, singing, violin and recorder playing, handicraft, part of the curriculum, not extra-curricular. 
2. (They teach kids reading, writing, calculating, experimenting, learning, collaborating, expressing, arguing, resolving conflicts, having fun too, in case you are wondering.)
3. We need our cooking crew because we believe in making and feeding our students and staff with our "home-cooked" vegetarian snacks and lunches.
4. We are supporting students financially, because we want to build a business model that has "affordability" built in. We believe this has to be a requirement from the get-go, instead of something we might do when we can "afford" it. 
5. We run Primary Teachers' training, hosted by experienced Waldorf teachers [only available] from overseas, to help grow future local teachers for all Waldorf schools in Hong Kong. 

That's why we are a non-profit, because we want to remove the desire to do things for personal gains, so then every dollar we make goes back to our quest to achieving our vision. 

If you believe in the need for our society to carve alternative paths for great education, if our motivation relates to you, if you trust our ability to bring this vision to life, consider supporting us to do the work. Please donate to Island Waldorf School.

https://iws.edu.hk/about-team/giving/

We are also on BENEVITY, a platform used by many corporations to match employees' donations.

Make December of 2020 the month when you say "I am done researching and I am giving."