Greivability is the motivator of giving. This concept, as discussed in class last week, has really stuck with me as I think about my personal feelings about charity. From a young age, I remember each birthday receiving a card from my grandmother that was not filled with the money I was hoping for but rather a donation in my name to her own charity. Before being of age to understand what this meant, I was a doner to NOHR– the National Organization for Hearing Research Foundation. My grandmother grieved the loss of her own hearing and used that personal experience to help push for research in hearing loss prevention. Looking back at my ignorance of not understanding the uniqueness of this gift, I now acknowledge that this was my first instance of giving, whether I liked it or not. I grew up in the middle—the middle child, in the middle of nowhere Colorado, in the middle class. I have always been very aware of my privilege and understanding that I didn’t choose to grow up in the States with a loving family, the same way people don’t choose to grow up in very different circumstances. This being said I can’t remember my family speaking much about donating when I was growing up. While we had expendable income, most of my “giving to charities” came in the form of volunteering for the National Honors Society or community events. I remember helping at annual food drives or at college fairs in Middle and High School. One organization that was very prevalent throughout my childhood was Protect Our Winters (POW). I cared about this nonprofit because I grieved the changes that I was seeing in my small mountain town as less snow seemed to fall each year, and in turn, the economy struggled. POW would come into my town every year and do events for which high school students, including myself, would volunteer. I think that this attests to my philosophy of giving. I often have a hard time trusting where money would be going with large institutions. When you donate time, instead of money, you have full power over the influence of your giving. This philosophy may be because my family has never had vasts of extra money going to charities, or didn’t talk about it, but I have heard stories of corruption within nonprofits. While these are most likely the minority of nonprofits, I still worry that my money will get lost in the middle or not be used for its intention with larger organizations. If you hand food to someone who is hungry, you know they are getting food. If you donate money to an organization that feeds the hungry, you don’t know if that money is paying a salary or feeding someone in need. This isn’t to say that all charities are bad, and I am excited to learn about good organizations this semester, but I bring a level of skepticism to charities. I believe that charitable causes involving humans are most important. If I were given money and were told to choose to donate it to POW or a humanitarian organization, I would pick the latter despite my personal connection to POW. As a Human Right Studies minor at BU, I have a draw to humanitarian stories and studying the human condition throughout history. This being said, I do strongly believe that crises like global warming have dire effects on humans and are one of the world’s greatest threats at the moment, so supporting a cause in that realm will, in turn, help humans. I think capitalism is really interesting to think about in terms of charity. As we discussed in class with the Singer reading, if everyone with disposable income gave away that money, would there be any suffering? This is impossible in a capitalist society where there is a large disparity between the rich and the poor, but it fascinates me to think about it in terms of human greed. This brings me to the question of who is entitled to give. I have heard stories of people who have so little themselves, yet they still give to those even less fortunate, and vice versa. I like to think that those who can give away money will, but I also think that depending on where you live in the world, you believe that different things are necessities in your life and, therefore, don’t give away that extra money that would stop you for traveling or buying new clothes. I am not an exception to this rule and am aware that the things that I treat as normal to have in my daily life, may be viewed as luxurious in other places and seen as money I should rather give away. I grew up with the angel and devil on my shoulders in terms of religion and giving. My father was born and raised on the mainline of Philidelphia to a Jewish family, and my mother grew up in the Middle East practicing no religion but experienced the clashes of opposing forces leave her local grocery store and school in rubble. While my mother converted to Judaism when she and my father married, she is not shy to critic and question all things religion. This has placed me in a unique perspective to similarly question the motivations of giving for religion. Furthermore, I have never given money to religious organizations, and I am aware that I carry a stigma when it comes to “donating to the church (synagogue, etc).” I think that my philosophies around giving are very easily swayed on a case-by-case basis, and I am really looking forward to getting more concrete theories of charity in this course.