working for change
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working for change Thursday March 10
one of the greek houses on campus does a yearly philanthropy where they beg for change around the quad, and then donate all that money to child abuse concerns. it's the most successful philanthrophy on campus.
my new job takes me between two buildings (one on the quad, one right off of it), and so i've passed these girls at least 10 times this week. i haven't given them a red cent yet.
it's not because i don't have any money, and while i can be cheap, i do like to give my money away, so that's not even it. there's something that bugs me about it, and i knew it from the moment i saw it; i just couldn't put my finger on it. this post is an experiment to do so, and we'll see where it leads me.
these girls stand out in the cold yelling "every penny counts", "help stop child abuse", and the like. they'll probably each collect around 20-30 dollars per day, and there are approximately 15 of them at any one time. quick math tells us that for a week, they rake in about $2,300 dollars. that's a highball estimate.
but let's take a moment to evaluate man-hours (er, person-hours). if there are 40 hours in a work week, and 15 people working, they're running $2,300 over 600 person-hours. so, the rate per person is $3.85 per hour. that's just over half of minimum wage.
that's one part of it that bugs me -- inefficiency. these girls can give up an entire week (in shifts, naturally) to beg for my change, but really, they are all young, capable workers -- workers that care, no less, because they're out there standing in the cold.
why are they begging for money to pay for help for children? why not cut out the middleman, and just try to help children on their own through volunteer projects with the champaign county DCFS? because that's not as glamorous? because it's actually REAL work?
and here's beef number two: for every single one of those girls out there, how many were wearing nice coats, nice jeans, nice earrings, listening to a nice, new ipod, and let's not forget the nice shoes. if they cut at least one thing out of their monthly budget valued at $20, multiplied by the 120 girls in the house, they'd have $2,400 right there, and they'd have saved a lot of their own time.
time they could have spent volunteering.
time they could have spent thinking about what it means to be so privledged to come from a home where they weren't the ones being abused.
does this make any sense? or am i totally off my rocker?
long story short: if you want to work for change, forget the pennies and nickels and dimes, work for change on the inside first, and everything else will fall into place.
