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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Helping children give back
On the tenth anniversary of September 11th I wrote an article for West Hollywood Patch about a local resident who had many personal connections to the disaster in New York on 9/11/2001 and continues to thank her local fire department and police every year on 9/11.
We seem to need holidays and anniversaries to remind us to give back. Social media allows us to take actions everyday by clicking to give and posting to spread the word.
But how do we as parents help children to give back that's live and in person? Do we model giving food or money to the homeless person on the corner? I like to bring my son with me for a few hours while I sign voters in and out on election day. Maybe he can't vote but he can hand out stickers.
After attending a fund raiser a few years ago for Project Angel Food, I inquired whether I could bring my kindergartener to help make food or perhaps distribute food to their clients. They informed me that, alas, there were age requirements but they encouraged school children to decorate bags for holidays and birthdays. For my son that wasn't enough, before we knew it he had arranged for all three kindergarten classes to decorate bags. We brought them to the volunteer headquarters and they most graciously gave him a tour of their kitchen (which for a kindergartner was quite an exciting event). He was so proud that one day during first grade he informed me that he'd already spoken to his teacher about doing so, again. And he has made it his personal mission every year and I've become the taxi driver, of sorts. And proud to let him do so.
Giving can take you by surprise. A few years ago my son wanted to put up a last minute lemonade stand. Worried that it was too late in the day and not on a high traffic street I encouraged him to offer to donate a percentage of his proceeds to a good cause. He decided he wanted to donate it to his public school. We put that on the sign and many more people stopped. Traffic workers, neighbors and good samaritans paid way over the asking price knowing that a percentage was going back to the local school. The next time we did it we had to add a variety of baked goods. Just last week, my son was having a play date and he and his friend decided not only to have a lemonade stand but to sell old toys, as well. This time they were giving 100% of the proceeds to St. Jude Children's Hospital. A prouder mother there never was and he had passed that great feeling of giving onto another child and family.
But how do we as parents help children to give back that's live and in person? Do we model giving food or money to the homeless person on the corner? I like to bring my son with me for a few hours while I sign voters in and out on election day. Maybe he can't vote but he can hand out stickers.
After attending a fund raiser a few years ago for Project Angel Food, I inquired whether I could bring my kindergartener to help make food or perhaps distribute food to their clients. They informed me that, alas, there were age requirements but they encouraged school children to decorate bags for holidays and birthdays. For my son that wasn't enough, before we knew it he had arranged for all three kindergarten classes to decorate bags. We brought them to the volunteer headquarters and they most graciously gave him a tour of their kitchen (which for a kindergartner was quite an exciting event). He was so proud that one day during first grade he informed me that he'd already spoken to his teacher about doing so, again. And he has made it his personal mission every year and I've become the taxi driver, of sorts. And proud to let him do so.
Giving can take you by surprise. A few years ago my son wanted to put up a last minute lemonade stand. Worried that it was too late in the day and not on a high traffic street I encouraged him to offer to donate a percentage of his proceeds to a good cause. He decided he wanted to donate it to his public school. We put that on the sign and many more people stopped. Traffic workers, neighbors and good samaritans paid way over the asking price knowing that a percentage was going back to the local school. The next time we did it we had to add a variety of baked goods. Just last week, my son was having a play date and he and his friend decided not only to have a lemonade stand but to sell old toys, as well. This time they were giving 100% of the proceeds to St. Jude Children's Hospital. A prouder mother there never was and he had passed that great feeling of giving onto another child and family.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Mike Daisey lied - but that doesn't mean overseas factories should be let off the hook.
The need for the press is crucial. The need for the press to have solid ethical grounds in critical.
But when the message we get from a story is clearly delivered as performance, a memoir, and even a fictionalized account, we give it permission to embellish and to editorialize. I loved Fela, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Serafina -- all theatrical depictions of historical events that educate and command sympathy. I understood these were fiction but also came to feel sympathy for history and the people involved. The thing is, there are degrees... and we need to remember not to let the underlying message get lost. Janet Cooke at the Washington Post got the Pulitzer Prize for a story about crack among children in the Washington D.C. ghetto... turned out she made it all up. Does that mean there were no crack problems among children and poverty in the Washington DC children? Of course, the problem would come to be worse then she ever made up. But she wrote it for the Washington Post and called it journalism.
When Mike Daisey went on This American Life and told his story about misconduct and mistreatment of workers at Chinese Foxconn facilities where iPhones and other popular tech products-- he lied to the producers and researchers about several facts. Bottom line: he is a creative writer. His biggest error was that he allowed his desire for success and good storytelling get in the way of the facts. In his interview Ira Glass asks Mike Daisey why he won't just call his report fiction -- Mike Daisey has a hard time answering this -- and I understand why. Daisey witnessed things that he found to be unacceptable. He says he felt that he had to tell the story when the news had stopped covering it. So it seems the big question remains... does Apple and other American companies using Foxconn look away at worker treatment and standards below American standards when no one is looking? I understand why This American Life as a journalistic entity is embarrassed that they let his embellishments go without checking and I think that their retraction and Mike Daisey's lets them off the hook. However, as journalists perhaps they should pursue the more important message -- there are a lot of lazy standards in American factories and many more oversees -- you just have to get in and look. People like their products and often don't want to know but I think if they did, they'd be appalled and demand change.
Having worked in a salmon cannery for a summer in Alaska in 1995 -- I know all too well that the standards are allowed to slip when the inspectors are gone. I never ate canned salmon again after that, in fact, I don't eat much canned food at all after I saw the way sanitation and safety practices slip when big payloads come in and workers get into the 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th hour of work. That was here in the US. So why in the world would we believe that just because Apple says they've self-inspected the factories and everything's on the up and up would anyone believe it. Let's ask the question -- why aren't the press covering factory conditions in China and anywhere else we're making American products for cheap? Is it a corporate lock-out? Is everyone satisfied by the idea that corporations can be self-policing? I surely am not.
But when the message we get from a story is clearly delivered as performance, a memoir, and even a fictionalized account, we give it permission to embellish and to editorialize. I loved Fela, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Serafina -- all theatrical depictions of historical events that educate and command sympathy. I understood these were fiction but also came to feel sympathy for history and the people involved. The thing is, there are degrees... and we need to remember not to let the underlying message get lost. Janet Cooke at the Washington Post got the Pulitzer Prize for a story about crack among children in the Washington D.C. ghetto... turned out she made it all up. Does that mean there were no crack problems among children and poverty in the Washington DC children? Of course, the problem would come to be worse then she ever made up. But she wrote it for the Washington Post and called it journalism.
When Mike Daisey went on This American Life and told his story about misconduct and mistreatment of workers at Chinese Foxconn facilities where iPhones and other popular tech products-- he lied to the producers and researchers about several facts. Bottom line: he is a creative writer. His biggest error was that he allowed his desire for success and good storytelling get in the way of the facts. In his interview Ira Glass asks Mike Daisey why he won't just call his report fiction -- Mike Daisey has a hard time answering this -- and I understand why. Daisey witnessed things that he found to be unacceptable. He says he felt that he had to tell the story when the news had stopped covering it. So it seems the big question remains... does Apple and other American companies using Foxconn look away at worker treatment and standards below American standards when no one is looking? I understand why This American Life as a journalistic entity is embarrassed that they let his embellishments go without checking and I think that their retraction and Mike Daisey's lets them off the hook. However, as journalists perhaps they should pursue the more important message -- there are a lot of lazy standards in American factories and many more oversees -- you just have to get in and look. People like their products and often don't want to know but I think if they did, they'd be appalled and demand change.
Having worked in a salmon cannery for a summer in Alaska in 1995 -- I know all too well that the standards are allowed to slip when the inspectors are gone. I never ate canned salmon again after that, in fact, I don't eat much canned food at all after I saw the way sanitation and safety practices slip when big payloads come in and workers get into the 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th hour of work. That was here in the US. So why in the world would we believe that just because Apple says they've self-inspected the factories and everything's on the up and up would anyone believe it. Let's ask the question -- why aren't the press covering factory conditions in China and anywhere else we're making American products for cheap? Is it a corporate lock-out? Is everyone satisfied by the idea that corporations can be self-policing? I surely am not.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Kony 2012 is an incredible use of social media to help people participate in the next action of global love for children
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest.
Joseph Kony is one of the world’s worst war criminals and I support the interhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnational effort to arrest him, disarm the lRa and bring the child soldiers home.
See this video to understand why and what you can do to help: http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc
#StopKony.
Joseph Kony is one of the world’s worst war criminals and I support the interhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnational effort to arrest him, disarm the lRa and bring the child soldiers home.
See this video to understand why and what you can do to help: http://youtu.be/Y4MnpzG5Sqc
#StopKony.
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