Jack Nicholson's character in About Schmidt decides to sponsor an African child after he's flipping through the cable channels and sees one of those gut wrenching commercials about helping the starving children in Africa. And Schmidt just says, aw what the hell, and signs up. He's really got nothing to lose at that point in his life -- a jobless widower with nary a hobby. Throughout the movie he writes these hilariously inappropriate letters to "Ndugu," the boy he's sponsoring who doubtless has no idea where he's coming from.
I've been reading/re-reading Gandhi, Alan Watts, Ram Dass (not implying that these 3 have a whole lot in common, but they're all spiritual seekers): turning my mind toward spiritual things, one might say; looking for meaning, substance and value in my life and life in general. Not for the first time in my life, to be sure. But this year I had to return to those questions and thoughts for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to do like Schmidt and signed up on Childreach with a pretty little Indian girl named Sikhaswarupa. She's 3 1/2 years old, so I don't expect to hear from her any time soon. But according to the people at Childreach her mother can write and will write to us at least once per year until her daughter is old enough. We received two pictures and a pamphlet of materials from Childreach only two days after we signed up online. One picture was of Sikhaswarupa with a shaved head in a green toddler's outfit and blue sandals outside. The second picture was of her in her mother's arms, also outdoors. The father was not pictured, but he exists and has a government job, we are told.
The cost of sponsoring a child through Childreach is $24/month. We cancelled cable TV service last year out of frustration and disappointment with the inconsistent service and the fact that we only watched local channels and HBO. This saves us about $30/month (we had the cheapest "minimum basic" cable), which we can afford to spend on charity. God knows I've seen enough TV to last a lifetime. And I still get my local channels well enough with a cheap pair of electrically amplified rabbit ears.
The thing I like about Childreach is that you have some interaction with the people you're helping. And the way the charity works isn't that the money you pay goes directly to the child or his/her family (which makes the About Schmidt scene where he mails Ndugu "a little extra" in one of his monthly checks even funnier). Rather, it goes to fund programs in the community where the child lives. So these children, as near as I can figure, are essentially volunteers in their communities -- writing letters to a sponsor as a way of helping their community.
We signed up for another child on Childreach today. It's so hard to choose just one. You want to help them all. I chose Sikhaswarupa first because I have several Indian friends and acquaintances in America now at work, I have an avid interest in Indian culture and literature, and because I know females have a tougher lot in India in general. Age wasn't important. But for the one I chose today, he's a 16 year old boy from India: Askar. I chose him because a message on the Childreach site said that children over 14 sometimes have a hard time finding sponsors, and because he had the most solemn, borderline sad, expression of all the children in that age group. I think it matters little which country you choose, but it might help to choose someone from a country you're interested in or have some knowledge of its culture or language.
Finally, I don't intend to bury this reference here, but I wanted to point out that you can also donate money to Childreach's emergency funds and special causes. The special cause that really struck a chord with me today was Nepalese "girl trafficking, " i.e., kidnapping underage girls and selling them to brothels in India: Rescued - one girl's story.
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