Put your money where your heart is

How I realized that I (and you) have money to give

By Zaren White

It's Easy Being Green

How many times have you heard one of your peers describe themselves as a “starving student”? When’s the last time you were literally starving or without any means of obtaining any money for, well, anything?

It seems common for us, as considerably privileged North Americans, to have a pretty skewed notion of poverty. Our access to everything—food, clothing, education, information—is enormous. Our resulting tendency to waste and take from granted is even greater. Many people I know complain about being poor when they can’t afford to go drinking on the weekend. What a luxury.

How did our perceptions become so narrow? I don’t write this to preach or suggest that I’m not part of this. I am routinely, and now more consciously, appalled by my inability to see beyond the veneer of privilege that allows us to forget how hard some people have it, and how wrong that is.

I am trying to re-learn what really matters in our lives. I remind myself of the reality that billions of people in the world have never and may never enjoy the basic rights, freedoms, and material wealth that we are so used to.

In some ways, it’s no wonder we’ve become so disconnected, so saturated in our wealth and ingrained possibilities that we’ve failed to remember how un-universal these “privileges” are. Our generation in particular has known increased access to resources, information technology, and empowerment.

Now, you may think, “I’m a university student and I’m not rich. I use student loans and work constantly and have an old laptop and an old cell phone. I don’t have any of this ‘wealth.’”

It’s true, but you have something much, much greater.

You’re in university. Even if you graduate indebted, you’ve gained an education and you lived in a society in which you had the opportunity to apply for a loan and attend university at all. You weren’t too busy working all day, every day to pay into your family’s household or caring as the sole provider for your younger siblings. And if you have a cell phone or a laptop at all, you’re doing alright.

You will graduate with more education, empowerment, and wealth (material and otherwise) than many people in the world can even dream about. In fact, since elementary school, you have already surpassed the 75 million children worldwide who do not have access to primary education.

Someone said to me recently during a conversation about this: “Well, I don’t need to worry about poverty in Africa. Even if poverty in Africa is much worse than poverty in Canada, it is conditions in Canada that I have to worry about. I’m a citizen of Canada, not Africa.”

I don’t think that the fact that you happened to be fortunate enough to be born in Canada should exempt a person from global citizenship and relating to the world on the level on which many others are trapped: a downtrodden, restricted, unequal, and disenfranchised level.

You may be thinking “isn’t this supposed to be a sustainability column?” Well, first of all, sustainability is inextricably linked to global issues, and cannot be separated from poverty, human rights, equality, and gender justice. They are intertwined and you can’t consider or ameliorate one without working on all.

It was surprisingly recently that I had a revelation: I am richer, even as a recent grad who paid her own way through university start to finish and incurred thousands of dollars in debts, than many people in this world will ever be.

While visiting Kingston, Ontario, I spoke with Greenpeace canvassers and signed up to donate $20 a month indefinitely. Now, I’m not advocating for Greenpeace per se; before I talked to some members, I didn’t know much about the organization and, if anything, was skeptical because of some perspectives I’ve heard regarding their “eco-terrorism.”

The reality is that Greenpeace is an international organization that is getting important work and campaigning accomplished, work that I care about, and $20 a month, for however long I continue to donate, won’t be missed from my proverbial pocketbook.

What is that? One t-shirt a month (that anyone who knows me knows I don’t need). Two fast-food meals I shouldn’t eat. Four café mochas I shouldn’t drink.

I don’t want to stop there, because that was just a small foray. I want to sponsor a foster child, possibly one independently and one with my friends and co-workers. At $30 to $40 a month, sponsoring a child can be both rewarding and feasible. With a group of 10 people, it would only cost four dollars each. Four dollars is not much to us but is a lot to some.

Almost half the world’s population lives on less than a dollar a day. I know that anyone reading this article is not in that group. You can’t give your time and energy to every organization (although you can try) but you can give in other ways. Remember that fortune and put your money where your heart is, whatever cause that may be.

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