Every year our company participates in a program called “Helping Hands.” The idea is that each department is assigned a family, whose characteristics and needs are shared with the group, and donations are made in their aid.
This year the families special requests were video games and gift cards for the girl who liked to shop.
Excuse me, how needy can these kids be, if they are asking for video games and shopping is their favorite activity???
21 comments:
Damn! Does wanting a new cellphone count as needy? (^_^)
When I was growing up, and even today, I loved books as gifts.
Your entry heading says it all...the only word missing is North American at the beginning.
This is a society where welfare recipients have cellphones and computers and internet hook up.
Our poor, are actually rich by comparison to 75% (or more) of the rest of the world.
I'm going to India in a month, where I doubt any homeless or needy people would ask for a cell phone....
that is just ridiculous.
go play outside at the park
go window shopping
that's what poor people do. And when they are done they go study those books so they can grow up to not be needy.
Take books. Reader's Digest and Chandamama magazines and Amar Chitra Katha comics were gems I couldn't wait to get my hands on.
Since I live in the west, I'll keep hoping for that Nokia N95... heh heh heh.
lol Jumbs...so you don't want the phone, u just wnat the books ok done!
hehe will let the fly know...
GC: You know...
That's right...the definition of "poor" is relative.
I remember my mother telling me about not having food to eat right after the war, when I was refusing to eat a full meal. I couldn't relate to that and didn't care...just as when my stepchildren were encouraged to get a part time job at 18, and didn't care that their father was working part time from the time he was 11 "back home", and giving his entire pay to his mother.
People consider themselves "poor" by comparison to people where they live...not in the world scheme.
Although, agreed...it's ridiculous, because it isn't actually poor, is it?
wow.. If your company knew about me they would probably assign a dept. to me.
What a bunch of crap. I'm sorry, but if I'm going to go spend my husbands hard earned money on a needy kid, they are getting clothes and food. Kids need clothes, right? And last time I checked, my kids appreciated 3 square meals a day.
they want a lil luxury item to fit in with the cool kids
I agree. Maybe they can't stand the grim realities the truly destitute have to face, and decide to help those who are marginally below them on the social ladder
So what are you gong to get them? Books and clothes, I say. Kids spend way too much time on video games. (Wow, I sound like my mother!)
Secret agents need love
Errrr, you can't really compare needy children from North America to needy children of India. Virtually nobody in North America is starving (at least at the moment). So if you're judging it by comparing it to that standard you're not just in the wrong ballpark, you're in the wrong sport.
The poor kids in Canada or in the US have food and clothes (except in really extreme cases which it sounds like you're program isn't working on) so they are basically looking for toys or a gift of some sort so they can have something extra. They go to school where their peers have cellphones, ipods, wiis etc and they probably feel left out.
Abeni and Radmila are right on this. Everyone else seems to be acting like these poor kids are acting like spoiled brats by comparing them to an entirely different standard.
(Although I think both Abeni and Radmila work with kids and probably have a deeper understanding of it then the rest of us)
you have no idea how important video games are to kidds nowadays. a bouncy ball just doesn't cut it anymore - its not 1968
have you ever been hungry ? have you watched your kids be hungry and i dont just mean food poor children have hopes desires and wishes and most of all they want any anything that makes them feel like they are the same as the other kids and geuss what people poor people shop have you ever had to shop at the thrift store do you know how it feels to only ever have hand me downs well many children do and not cause there parents are lazy but because of hard times job loss or just cause ends dont meet,i have nine children and my husband and i stuggle but we always make a way and we both have a job christmas probably wont come till january for us but i still feed any kid i know is hungry do what i can for the homeless and believe that i and my family is better for it because everyone is not as well off as my family and we are barely getting by but i remember my childhood and remember how hard my mom tried to perk me up about shopping at goodwill and salvation army,and i remember how my mom who was proud as they came standing in toy lines or getting free coats and how when i went to school i got laughed at because my things weren't as nice as the other kids i also remember that she never got a dime of support for us when donor daddy got a new family we started being poor so look at your life and see you are lucky and try to understand that yes some people are greedy but even the poor child deserves a decent christmas birthday and a everyday life that has some normal things in it.
oh yeah and even when i could'nt afford to pay my cellphone i paid my childrens because it kept them in touch while i worked and it si just safer for a kid to have a phone my kids dont go to the library because on several occassions their were people using porn on the computers so guess what our broke asses got internet and a computer and guess what they get good grades so because we are financial in a bind we are not supposed to try and have the best for our children that is sad
Last time I checked, the library banned my blog because of language content...so, porn at the library? I don't think so.
that is your library but in cleve ohio bet you can google articles about porn on library computers so try to know cause i have seen it as well and actually spoke with the library personnel because they were printing it out on the printers the librarian really did'nt say anything she told security and the young man was asked to leave i live down the street from the library and it is not in suburbia so he whom it is my understanding a registered sex offender should not have been there but he was and still does use the computers at the library it is very easy to do ask around people know what is going on in this world
I truly believe that we have reached the point where technology has become one with our lives, and I can say with 99% certainty that we have passed the point of no return in our relationship with technology.
I don't mean this in a bad way, of course! Societal concerns aside... I just hope that as memory becomes cheaper, the possibility of transferring our memories onto a digital medium becomes a true reality. It's one of the things I really wish I could encounter in my lifetime.
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