As members of the Winters College and York Community we enjoy great privileges and opportunities which we hardly recognize and rarely acknowledge. Even more rarely do we recognize and act upon the huge obligations that follow from these privileges and benefits. The continuing disaster in Haiti  gives us an urgent  occasion for  realizing our obligations.

Here are some suggestions –all  of them personal from me as a long standing member of the York and College community.

 Paul Swarney

pswarney@yorku.ca

How to donate immediately-

• Select a charity that appears to be on the ground in Haiti, but above all select a charity that  issues a tax receipt!

• Donate by cheque or credit card; these are easier for the charity  to handle –and to trace- than cash and present fewer temptations  to the collector to divert some or all of the cash. Besides,  tossing a $ 20 dollar bill into a pot often seems to be a bigger donation than writing a $ 50 dollar cheque!   

• If you donate on-line, be very firm with the charity that it not share your name and e-mail address with other charities and not to contact you by e-mail either;  otherwise you will be deluged with appeals week by week.  A list of charities taken from the CBC web pages is given below.

In the long term-

• Repeat the donations that you made six months or a year from now!  Don’t let one donation delude you into thinking that you have met and satisfied the obligations of a person of privilege!

• Become politically active.  Prof. Rob Kenedy in his workshop last week made us all very aware of the civic indifference and ignorance of most all members of the University and Winters community, including you and me.  What are our governments and we doing about the disaster and life after the earthquake?  Are we going to indifferently slip back into our level of action before the earthquake?  Do we give a damn about the rest of the world or are caught up in  maintaining our positions of privilege? When is the last time we wrote or sent an e-mail to our member of Parliament?  

• If you think that you hard pressed for funds, have a look at a picture from the disaster in Haiti.  Each picture is certainly worth a donation from each of us.