SHORT(AGE) CHANGED

With the headlines blaring a crisis in basic necessities such as rice and gas, something has got to give. Let me scratch that thought: it should be someone has to give. The crises of the world all stem not from a lack of resources but a lack of giving. This leads to unequal distribution of goods and not a shortage of them. We basically can’t afford to shortchange each other any longer. This shortage of giving must be changed. This is former US President Bill Clinton’s proposition in his book entitled Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.

According to Bill, giving time, money, things and even skills is everyone’s business because our common humanity makes “everyone matter.” As he says, “think how much better the world would be if we actually saw each other,” making the point that we should see that our neighbors all deserve equal rights — to what they eat on table and to the information accessible to them. He mentions the African term Ubuntu, which means “I am because you are,” underscoring the belief that we have to realize that what we do and who we are shape the lives of others. He divides the book into different ways of lending a hand. He starts off with the obvious way — giving money — and then develops the book with more innovative stories about people who donate their skills and ideas.

Giving is best described as realistic. It is not the sappy UNICEF postcard that is meant to pull wads of dough from your pocket as tears stream from your eyes. As much as it may seem like Clinton is trumpeting his own efforts, the book is more about turning people into smart Samaritans through a generous amount of examples. Givers and founders of advocacy institutions range from billionaire Bill Gates to a 75-year-old laundry woman Oseola McCarty who gave 66 percent of her savings to start a high school scholarship fund.

Relief In Belief

The eye-opening examples include foundations built around religious dialogue such as Interfaith Youth Core and PeacePlayers. Interfaith Youth Core is an organization set up by Dr. Eboo Patel, an Indian American Muslim living in Chicago. His work focuses on initiatives such as Interfaith Youth Service day in which Muslims, Jews and Christians discuss their faith and how it leads them to serve in society. PeacePlayers, meanwhile, is about organizing basketball matches with youth coming from various religions in order to learn how to work and play together. It is more about finding respect in an environment where there is usually a lack of knowledge and understanding.

Religious dialogue, I believe, is very relevant today because of the fanatical caricatures the media make of people who take their faith seriously. US President Bush’s seeming incompetence is often blamed on his backwater southern Christian roots. On the other hand, Muslims are commonly tagged as zealot terrorists. The media have basically marred the right of people to believe when we are in world that seriously needs people with souls and consciences to guide them.

Pitch Your Idea

Although you may still be cynical because we live in a developing country, change is still possible through finding institutional grants to fund your idea. One of these grants is YSEI or the Youth Social Enterprise Initiative created by Global Knowledge Partnership, a foundation for development composed of groups from various sectors of society. They have given grants to two Filipino initiatives with start-up capital of $15,000 each. The most recent grant is the Mobile Telecenter given to students from OrphanIT, an IT education NGO. The mobile telecenter is actually a tricycle (called an “Etrike”) that can carry three laptop computers with PLDT WeRoam Internet, a mobile cell phone repair unit, a battery-operated printer, one camera and three cellphones. The Etrike is designed to bridge the digital gap and give people in the slums an opportunity to learn how to use and be familiar with computers and other telecommunications equipment. If you wish to follow in their footsteps (or Etrikes), you can find more information about YSEI at http://www.ysei.org/.

Catch The Conversation

You can also make a difference through dialogue and finding like-minded people to share your dream. You can start by joining the upcoming Pecha Kucha Night to be held in Mag:Net Bonifacio High Street on June 13. Pecha Kucha or “chit-chat” was started by Japan-based architect Klein Dytham as an evening of idea-swapping. Pecha Kucha speakers have six minutes and 40 seconds of fame to present 20 images about a certain topic. Your story time on stage can be anything from your best friend’s smelly sock collection to your affinity for manholes in Manila. After flipping through their fifth anniversary book, I learned that presenters can be as varied as their presentations. There have been mayors, six-year-old kids, tattoo photographers, mothers and performance artists who have Pecha Kuchaed their way to the stage.

If you dare to be the 3,000th presenter in an event that has been held in more than 100 countries, you can send your sample images and your story to the organizers, Ideals Creative, an advertising agency specializing in social responsibility work and also products of the YSEI program. You can visit their website at http://pechakuchamanila.com/ or e-mail them at PKNManila@gmail.com.

Give Your Stories

Bill Clinton concludes his book Giving by saying the only convincing argument for social work is happiness. He has never met a giver who wasn’t happy and a selfish man who has not wallowed in his sorrow. This is especially true as you read more stories online in his website where people add their own personal initiatives on giving. As you will see from their stories, giving is making a comeback because it is the only way to live. Besides, being selfish is shortchanging us out of the happiness we ought to have.

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Share your stories at Clintonfoundation.com/Giving. “Giving” by Bill Clinton is available at National Book Store.

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Share your thoughts at readnow@supreme.ph.