Monday, November 20, 2006

My faculty is having an auction for charity this year. I actually think its a great idea. We are all asked to donate things to be auctionned off. for myself, having just learned to bind books (okay, only two styles), I am going to donate one of those. They are homemade, yes, but they look great. My room mate is donating view master slides of the Library of Congress. She bought them on ebay. After hearing about the auction, our book binding session leader offered us a spot in one of her workshops. I really love the idea, especially at Christmas, of giving a little something to people who do not have so much.

But what I do not like is the choice of charity that the faculty made. We are donating the profits to Sick Kids. I get it: no one likes a sick child. i know. but. they are a huge corporation with a huge budget for fundraising and for raising public awareness of the funds they need. And, they often pay their fundraisers. what, you think those people with the binders on every street corner are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts? I think not. My point is this. They have fundraisers. Could we not have chosen a charity that perhaps needed the assistance a little more? A local charity? Perhaps even one related to libraries? I would even feel better if we were donating a collection of books to the Sick Kids library. Or, we could subscribe to an electronic database on behalf of one of the public libraries. Or we could donate to Librarians Without Borders, a venture launched by students at the Western. We could have done something that was a little more in tune with, well, us. It would be nice to see library students raising awareness , and advocating for, library needs and library users. who knew I was so keen, hey?

That being said, Sick Kids is a better charity than no charity, and I am happy to help out.

6 comments:

Alex said...

I was around when the original charity topic was suggested. I half jokingly suggested Child's Play which is a charity run by the authors of Penny Arcade an online gaming comic. Child's Play builds amazon wish lists for local children's hospitals and allows donators to buy items from them. These items are usually books, dvds, or videogames.

Sick Kids is on Child's Play's site as the representative hospital for Toronto so I think that's how the choice of charity got distilled down to them.

Anywho I better go find my item to donate. If I had hair I would donate that but I'm not sure if I'd want to meet the person willing to pay for it.

Court said...

Well, I do see your point in the sense that they could have chosen some sort of charity related more to your field, I have to say I happily give whatever I can to Sick Kids.

It is important to keep in mind that Sick Kids right here in Toronto is ranked one of the top 5 children's hospitals in the world. Children come from around the world to Toronto to get the best possible care provided.

I have had to use their emergency room services on a few occasions for my daughter, and more importantly some of the specialist pediatric services. I would not take my daughter anywhere else if I have the choice.

al said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
al said...

of course I am not saying that we should short change children's hospitals. i am just saying that Sick Kids, whose charitable foundation deals with the hundreds of millions and has the capacity to hold gala balls and have people on every street corner, might not necessarily be the most deserving charity for our efforts. I mean, will they miss our donation?

Not that you need to be in dire need to deserve funding. Which is why I also said that I would be much happier giving a more catered gift.

It seems difficult, or impossible, to determine whether one charity is more "important" than any other, but, I think I will always be a fan of donating to grass roots organizations, where the money donated is very close to the money spent on charitable actions.

also, Alex, Child's Play sounds like a great charity. And if that's how it was chosen, than that sounds great. Couldn't be happier!

akd said...

don't forget - this program is not made up of just librarians. What was being avoided is the 'library centric' view of disregarding archives, museums and other cultural/information institutions.

Why must politics pervade the decision making process of choosing a charity? Sad but true.

al said...

I think politics pervades everything. Especially when it comes to how money is spent.

And you're right, I did disregard archives and, indeed, information studies students. Crap. I always do that. Unfortunately, not even on purpose.

I would be especially happy to donate money to a worthy archive related fund: they are some of the most important, and forgotten, community institutions.

But, again, that is my point: we could have chosen something in our community, related to our field.

If choosing Sick Kids is trying to be politically correct is an overly sensitive faculty, well, that is a whole other spin on things. Another thing I didn't think of.

There's a lot I don't think of. AKD, you do a superb job of wading through those waters and you don't get enough kudos!