Charities

It seems that everywhere you go now someone, somewhere, has a a pet charity for which they are trying to raise money. I was recently at a Broadway show where at the end, the actors hit the audience up for change on the way out to support their charity, "Broadway Cares."

I'm not the activist sort and I don't have a favourite charity. My friends normally are and do. I know just enough to be nervous. I know that there are reputable charities out there and ones that aren't. I have a friend who keeps up on this information and every now and then I'll run a charity by her.

My dirty secret though is that the charities I support aren't PC. I'll hesitate to give money to a poor developing country, but my university knows that I'm good for cash. Horror! Yes, my charitable donations go not to support those who are hungry, who have no shelter and who are suffering from war, but to support and uphold the greedy upper class.

But I disagree.

I have a huge karma debt that I owe to my university. I was a middle-class student who was falling between the financial support cracks. I didn't qualify for state aid based on parental income but my parent's couldn't afford to pay for my schooling. I knew that I was going to have to pay my own way through. By grade seven, my peers were starting to think about post-secondary education. My friend's talked of going to university. I wouldn't say either way. I said I was thinking of community college.

We were 14 and our ability to become employed was limited. Those of use who were paying our own way through got a job in the year in which we turned 16. By the end of high school, we were balancing part time jobs and our grades, trying to maximize both. The kids I worked with were all trying to save for university and college. One year as my aunt gave me birthday money, she looked at me, "This is for you to spend on yourself. It is not to go in the bank." It went in the bank. Everything went in the bank. I still talked of college.

Then I lucked out. I didn't qualify for bursary assistance but I won a scholarship. The scholarship gave me hope like nothing else. In the way that student bodies splinter, the kids who were paying their own way through clubbed together. They knew their stuff and they studied. They took school seriously. Those of them who were on scholarship took it even more seriously. I had several friend's on the same scholarship. You could tell by their faces, their marks on exams. A good mark garnered no reaction. Anything too close to the mark cut-off level meant a widening of the eyes. Either way, the test would be examined with a fine tooth comb. There was no room for error and an error made once could not be repeated.

Now when I tell people I was going to go to community college, they laugh at me. They don't understand. These are the same people who wonder why I always bring my lunch to work. It's related, but I won't tell them that.

I give to my university to assist the students who were like me. To rich to get assistance but too poor to make it on their own, these kids do all that they can to get themselves through school. And if they can't make it, we might lose the kid who would have been a doctor, the one who may have been a human rights lawyer, or the one who would have worked for the UN. And when someone's taken a chance on you, then you'll take a chance on other people.

My charity may not be PC, but I believe in it.