Plant a Row for the Hungry

Today, a rare foray into political topics. This won't happen often, I promise.

Yesterday I watched the historic inauguration of the first black US president. For reasons that remain mysterious even to me, I'm a bit of a sucker for pomp and circumstance, so I tend to enjoy these sorts of things. I wondered how much sleep Obama had gotten the night before. I sure hope our new president was wearing some really good long underwear. It was cold in Washington.

I was mostly, but not entirely, pleased with what Obama had to say in his inaugural address. I'm not sure that I can agree that the choice between safety and "our ideals," by which I assume he meant freedom, is false. I think our founding fathers - and mothers - knew full well that we must sometimes choose between our safety and our freedom, as clearly indicated by Benjamin Franklin's famous quote: "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." After all, rebelling against the most powerful nation in the world to declare our independence could hardly have been considered the safe move. Living in a free society means that we must accept that we are not always perfectly safe. Our country was founded on a firm choice for liberty over safety, and that's a part of our heritage we should be enormously proud of. So let's not glibly deny the dichotomy.

Likewise, I can't agree that we should not apologize for our "way of life." The American way of life is excessive and hideously impoverished at the same time. The very problems Obama identified as our immediate priorities - economic, environmental, and social - have been caused by a way of life characterized by overconsumption, a reliance on unsecured debt, and a dearth of strong communities. There is much that is good in our way of life, and we should take pride in those things. But let us not confuse patriotism with a blind endorsement of all that we do and all that we are. True patriotism lies in upholding and honoring what is good for our country, as well as in changing what is not good for us or our posterity.

Enough of abstract politics.

Obama's speech brought to my mind John F. Kennedy's inaugural address which contained the immortal line: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." I'm not sure exactly what got me from Obama to Kennedy. But I believe we will need a collective effort, a willingness for everyone to put their shoulders to the wheel and do what we can to help one another and help ourselves. So I started thinking about a simple, voluntary, and very grass-roots idea that has already seen great success. It's the Plant a Row for the Hungry project.

In a nutshell, Plant a Row calls on gardeners to dedicate one row of their garden to growing food to feed the hungry. This is such a brilliant idea for so many reasons. There are 70 million gardeners in the US. One in ten Americans either goes hungry or is at risk of hunger in any given week. Most of them are children. Food banks and soup kitchens are facing alarming shortages right now, and even in good times fresh produce is almost non-existent at these places. I know; I occasionally volunteer to load the grocery bags at a local food bank. No one needs to organize or coordinate the Plant a Row project. There are no meetings to attend or forms to fill out. It's just a self-directed gardener, doing a little extra work as a personal form of tithing directly to the poor. It can't solve all the world's problems, but it is something within easy reach of millions of us. And it is an absolute good.

If you have a garden, please consider breaking ground on a new row this year to grow food for hungry people in your area. There's still time to plan this into your garden for this year. Call your local food bank and see if they can accept fresh produce. Some cannot because they have no means of storing it. Ask enough questions. They may not be able to take lettuce, but perhaps they could briefly store potatoes, apples, or onions. If they cannot accept your produce, don't be discouraged. Ask if they know of another food bank, or a soup kitchen, or any food charity that could use what you plan to grow. They'll probably even be able to give you some phone numbers.

It took me only one call to reach someone at our local soup kitchen who was thrilled with the prospect of getting fresh produce come summertime. He said they almost never have anything in the way of fresh produce. I've talked two of my relatives into Planting a Row this year. Won't you consider joining us?

Feed the Hungry

Many of us are keenly aware of how precarious our food supply is right now, at both the personal and national level. People are losing jobs, and food prices are still high. Conventional agriculture relies on petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides. When the price of oil bounces back up, it will once again be prohibitively expensive to fly and ship food from continent to continent. Way back in 2004, then-Secretary of US Health Tommy Thompson mused, "I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do." Yikes.

It's scary. Even those of us who grow some of our own food and contribute to food banks often feel there's so very little we can do about food security. Well, there is one thing that is truly easy to do that can help alleviate world hunger. Play a word game on your computer.

Free rice is a minimalist website that offers an ongoing vocabulary test. For every word problem you correctly answer, the website will donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program. The costs are paid by the sponsors whose ads are remarkably unobtrusive on the gaming page. It costs you nothing but a few minutes of your time to contribute enough grains of rice to help feed a hungry person somewhere in the world. If English vocabulary isn't your strong suit, you can opt for vocabulary testing in another language, or get quizzed on your knowledge of chemistry, art, geography, or math. You may even learn a few things while you're at it.

I don't mean to trivialize hunger. We can't build a world of food security just by playing games on our computers. But it is one little thing we can do, and it's free and educational at the same time. So check out freerice.com and help someone in need, for free.

Microlending: Charity, Investment, or Entertainment?

A lot of frugality and personal finance bloggers write about the importance of charitable donations. I have to admit that historically I haven't been much of a giver money-wise. I'm much more likely to donate my time and efforts than to give money. I work at a local food bank about six times per year, bagging food for the clientele. And this year I've pitched in as a volunteer at the local library and for a local agricultural organization. But yesterday I tried something different.

I read Flexo's post on the Kiva credit card. Kiva is a non-profit middle-man organization for microlending. Microlending is pretty much what it sounds like - loans of very small amounts to entrepreneurs who wouldn't normally be eligible for conventional loans from a bank. Kiva offers the opportunity to browse real-live loan candidates from developing countries all over the world. You can see pictures, read short descriptions of the people who are seeking loans, and choose to "invest" as little as $25 to help an individual half way across the world improve their life and those of their family as well. You can even search by what sort of business the person is pursuing. The great part is that 100% of your donation goes directly to fund the loan. Kiva doesn't take a cent off the top.

Now it so happens that last week I sold a fancy cookbook from a fancy restaurant on eBay. I'd gotten the cookbook as a gift and had never cooked a single thing from it. Clearly, it was a good candidate for clutter reduction. I made almost exactly $25 on the auction, and I had that money sitting in my Paypal account. I had planned to snowflake that money towards an extra principle payment on our mortgage next month. But then I got to browsing the Kiva website, and I started thinking about what someone else could do with that $25. Soon enough, I'd chosen a female dairy farmer in Central Asia as my loan recipient. She wants a loan to buy another milking cow. Her total requested loan amount of $875 is not yet fully funded, and there are only a few days left for lenders to fund it.

Some bloggers have actually examined microlending as a viable investment option. As a lender, I may actually earn some interest from this loan if it is repaid. My view is a little different. True, I may get my money back. But in my mind, I just donated that $25, or I spent it on edutainment. Giving money to someone in a part of Central Asia I'd never heard of spurred me to fire up Google Earth and look at the satellite images, and then see what Wikipedia had to say about the place. I know I'll look forward to hearing the updates about this woman's business over the next year or so. If the loan is repaid, I intend to re-loan the original amount plus any interest it earns through Kiva.

Bloggers often talk about the feelings of satisfaction, benevolence, and wealth that come from giving to charity. I don't know why, but I resist these warm fuzzies. I don't like to feel benevolent or noble, or view my actions as anything but self-serving. Satisfied perhaps. I guess I just need to maintain some image of myself as a hardass. I believe I'll get my money's worth by watching how this tiny $25 drama unfolds. If the "investment" pays off, in time I'll get to watch larger dramas. And it'll all be funded by selling a book I never wanted in the first place.