Better Late Than Never

I had another post up and ready to go and but this has been rolling around in my head for awhile and I'd really like this not to be what I'm focused on again when I'm up feeding Jack at 3 am. Despite my mini-breakdown yesterday, I can't quite reconcile my relatively trivial issues with the gravity of what's happening in Haiti. Also, since this is a record of some of the events early in Jack and Molly's lives, it felt hard to ignore an event of this magnitude (yes, I know I'm a little slow to finally be writing about this). More to the point, if anyone is still looking for an organization to give money to to support relief efforts, Partners in Health is a very, very worthy option, in my opinion.

The work that these folks do, combating health problems in the world's poorest countries by partnering with the local, indigenous populations, is inspirational and the task is awesome in size. PIH has been in Haiti for over 25 years and while some criticized their model as unsustainable, the longevity of their health clinics seem to have proved the skeptics wrong. Making my money have some real impact was important to me (and there are obviously many, many groups that through which this could be accomplished) and since there is already infrastructure and a knowledge base present with these people (this has been more than a one time shot for me. I'm a little obsessed with this organization), it made sense for me to funnel a donation through them. A bonus is that you can make your donation in honor of someone so I made mine in honor of Molly and Jack.

Charitable giving is very important to many of us and it's a legacy that I want to pass on to my kids. Granted, they have no idea what's going on now but like with so many parenting lessons, I think it's better to start incorporating into their lives now so that it's a given rather than an exception. Now, this is obviously an exceptional event but I want it to be a natural reaction to give more when something like this happens. Sometimes it's not possible to give a monetary donation, I get that, so the gift of time or in kind donations are always an option. I'm sort of thinking that no one will have much use for Molly and Jack's time right now so a monetary donation seemed to make more sense.

I'm most definitely, definitely not trying to make this a holier than thou post. I'm guessing that I hit the send button on my donation later than other people. Nonetheless, if Colby taught me nothing else, they did teach me that you can't raise money unless you ask. I figured if I didn't put this out there, I didn't do everything I could do.

Thanks for reading... thankfully, we have the luck and ability to go back to our regularly scheduled programs shortly.