How much money do you have in your pocket right now? How much do you make an hour at your job?
And honestly, how bad do you want to see a movie in the theater, go to the club this weekend, buy a couple packs of cigarettes, rent a video game or do whatever you do when you spend money?
My point is this: the minimum donation on www.redcross.org is $5. And if you haven’t donated by now, you should.
Really, what’s $5 to you?
I know we’re all broke college students and blah, blah, blah. Even those of us whose parents are sending money every week so that a job won’t distract our studying are feeling the pinch. But come on, you can spare $5.
And if you really don’t have $5, beg for it. Beg people for $1 each until five people pay up. Then donate that money because people need it worse than you do right now. People need that money worse than what it will cost your pride to do a little begging. People need that money more than you need whatever minor investment you had in mind for this weekend.
And people need that money more than you need the peace of mind of knowing that you have a little pocket change.
The big picture should be obvious by now, but in case it’s not, let me spell it out for you: imagine if everybody in America who is living above the poverty line donated $5.
Wait, no. Imagine if everybody in America who isn’t homeless donated $5. Because even poor people with homes still have homes. The same cannot be said for our brothers and sisters down south.
So, let’s do some hypothetical math. There are close to 300 million people in the United States. Nationalhomeless.org estimates that at any given time there are about 3.5 million homeless Americans. We’ll round that off to 4 million who really can’t afford to contribute. As of Sept. 11, CNN put the confirmed death toll from Hurricane Katrina at 383, but that’s expected to rise significantly once the water recedes. And no total has been reached for how many people are now homeless due to the flooding.
For the sake of speculation, we’ll say that around 2 million people lost their homes or their lives or are in severe need of aid.
For the sake of round numbers, we’ll say that 10 million people were either directly affected by the hurricane or can’t afford to help. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 60 million Americans are under the age of 15 and therefore, presumably, don’t have their own incomes.
The bottom line is that if 70 million Americans can’t contribute, that leaves around 230 million who can. And if 230 million people donated $5 each, the result would be $1.15 billion dollars.
Sadly, most estimates of the total cost to recover from Katrina are well over $100 billion. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still give, even if $5 is all we can afford.
But disasters are a funny thing. Even with all the news coverage of recent weeks and all the benefits and charities that have come forward to help, many people still have decided not to reach into their pockets and contribute.
For many people, if they’re not directly impacted by a disaster, it’s not their problem. But you know good and well that those same people would be screaming and crying for help with their hands held out to the world if they were the ones who lost their homes. They would be the ones asking, “Why isn’t everyone helping me?” And they would be the ones rationalizing, “If everyone just gave a little, it would add up to a lot.”
But some people just have to learn the hard way, so we can’t waste our time waiting for them to come around. It’s up to those of us who understand the situation to do something about it.
So please, put aside whatever you had planned to spend your money on and donate your $5. And donate more if you can. Because you would expect people to do the same for you, wouldn’t you?