The Premise

This year, as my wife, Jen, and I were discussing resolutions, we decided that we wanted to find a way to do more charitable giving, both of our time and our money.  We have been very fortunate. We have all we need -  jobs we love that pay us well, an apartment we really like, plenty of food and heat and so on.  We felt that we needed to pass along some of our fortune tho those who do not have all of those things.  We had come across many opportunities and worthy causes to support, but we realized that we talked a lot more than we acted.  Jen suggested we resolve to do one volunteer opportunity each month.  I said that I thought that was too easy, and that is we really wanted to get serious, we should do something every week.  We decided that this was the level of challenge we were up for, even though we knew it would be hard to fit it in to our weekly schedules.  We agreed that to qualify as our weekly giving, we would have to work at least two hours as volunteers or give at least $25 to a charitable organization.  We are into our fourth week of the year now, and every time I talk about our year-long goal to someone, they seem interested in our quest.  Therefore, in an attempt to document our adventures and hopefully inspire some of our friends to give a little more often, I have decided to write about what we do each week.  So far, we have had a great time with some great organizations, and heard about a great many more.  So here goes...