Philanthropy = :)

Can I just say how much I love philanthropy? I mean, most people do. Who doesn't love helping people/animals/the world? But I mean that I LOVE it. It gets me all misty-eyed all the time. We've had Momma cat for 11 months now and I still tear up sometimes when I look at her and think about how close she came to not making it (she was a pregnant stray when we found her in the middle of January in Baltimore, and had I not been home when she went into labor, she would have died without an emergency C-section...and if we'd never found her in the first place, she wouldn't have made it either).

So at work every year, we do a program with the local children's home. The kids (about 50 of them) come to work and get to see where we do fun things like testing (aka breaking) helmets and frames. The kids also get to vote on the best-decorated tree. Each department gets a small Christmas tree to decorate with recycled ornaments (we're big on recycling and green things) that we make by hand. Let's just say it was pretty obvious which trees belonged to Purchasing and USA Sales as opposed to Industrial Design and Engineering. Whereas Chip spent a total of about 7 hours constructing a reindeer and sleigh out of bike parts (he's a mechanic and quite artsy), I spent a total of about 1 minute putting out a bowl of candy next to my tree, hoping to bribe the kids into voting for me. Didn't work. Industrial Design constructed a ROBOT. AND...the robot held a tray of candy canes with dollar bills attached. Hello?! Bribery! They didn't win though; HR got someone to bring their yellow lab in and hang out next to a tree. The kids loved that and voted for HR almost unanimously.

Chip's ornament (notice that the reindeer is made of bike chain, the bottom part of the sleigh is part of a bike frame, the rest of Santa is packing materials, and Santa's face was cut off of a Coke can):



Industrial Design's robot with candy canes with money tied to them:



After voting and touring, the kids got to go to this big room with a bunch of bikes in it. After a few minutes, it was announced that the bikes were for the kids. They went nuts; these are kids from terrible family situations or who have serious behavioral problems. They haven't been dealt a fair lot in life, and some don't even have homes to go back to. The looks on their faces was amazing. They were so appreciative and so excited in such an innocent and beautiful way. I hate Christmas so much sometimes, with all the consumerism and the way it seems to teach kids that they "need" and "deserve" all kinds of crap. I hate feeling pressured to buy people stuff just because it's December 25. It's cool that we say JC was born that day, but I have a pretty good feeling he wouldn't have wanted people celebrating his birthday by decorating their homes with the fruits of child slave labor or buying kids stuff they don't deserve or need. Anyway, it was wonderful to see these kids truly appreciating this gift, and to know that this could be the beginning of a lifetime of enjoyment for them. I love getting people on bikes, and the earlier the better! Let's just say that being a part of that event had me crying at my desk intermittently through the day on Friday.

In my job (international account rep), I really feel connected to the whole world. Everything is just an e-mail away. In a given day, I often exchange phone calls and e-mails with people in Portugal, Guatemala, Chile, Spain, and Taiwan, to name a few. This has spurred me to learn all about the countries for which I'm the account rep, as well as other countries. The fact that I speak Spanish and have a decent knowledge base in French doesn't hurt either with helping me to understand the rest of the world.

For a while, I've been really interested in Africa. I think it started when I was 11 and read "The Hot Zone." I was totally fascinated with this other side of the world, where things seemed totally different. I've also been interested in anthropology and archeology since I was little. For that reason I feel that although my direct ancestors are Slovak, German, and Scottish, my real history lies in Africa. Stories like those of Lucy and Turkana Boy feel like they are about me.

So this year I gave a gift of a "donation in your name" for the first time. I don't generally like those kinds of things (remember when George on "Seinfeld" made up the "Human Fund" and gave out fake donation cards?) because unless you know someone pretty well, you don't know in which charities they would be interested. And I don't want to give out donations to organizations like PETA and Dogs Deserve Better, which I support, and push my values on someone else. But this year I gave Chip a donation to Right to Play. It's a group that uses sports to bring kids together in Africa amidst poverty, war, and AIDS. Sports have meant a lot to me in my life (I played softball and soccer and ran track in high school; now cycling is of daily importance to me) and it's great to be able to give someone else the gift of the game. I know that this is something that is important to him too, and that makes me feel even better about giving a donation in his name.