If the Black Friday blues are getting to you, there’s an antidote to the entire shopping frenzy of the weekend, and it happens right after.
GivingTuesday encourages people to give a little bit to charities on the first Tuesday after the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. What better way to counteract consumerism than by opening up your heart and spreading the love.
“It’s a big movement in North America,” explained local organizer Doreen Slessor, the executive director of Stop Abuse in Families (SAIF). “People are spending, spending, spending, spending … it's that whole greed and commercialism thing. Why don’t we have a day for philanthropy?”
“After all this commercialism, why don’t we take a break and support philanthropy in our community? That’s what GivingTuesday is. It’s giving of your time, your money or your experience to charities in your community.”
In St. Albert, there are several charities that have signed up for a special event on November 29 to help people find their giving ways again.
The joint GivingTuesday activity is set to go at Servus Place from 2 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, of course. All of the participating charities will have their own booths where attendees can make direct donations. There is also a group pot that will have its contents split between the organizations afterward.
Along with SAIF, you can find the Sturgeon Community Hospital Foundation, Arts and Heritage St. Albert, Transitions Rehabilitation Association, the St. Albert Family Resource Centre, the LoSeCa Foundation, the St. Albert Salvation Army Church and Community Centre, and the St. Albert Community Information and Volunteer Centre (CIVC) on hand.
People are also encouraged to take part in what they are calling ‘flash philanthropy’. It’s a simple act of volunteering on the spot such as helping to spend a few minutes filling bags of personal care items to be given out to those in need.
Joe Becigneul, the executive director of the CIVC, offered a few suggestions for activities.
“That could be coming in and wrapping gifts for Sidekicks’ kids, perhaps filling a basket for the food bank … there’s all kinds of different things to make a donation that way.”
On the St. Albert Food Bank’s Facebook page, it also suggested that people could help make some packages of dried soup mix as a healthy addition to add to its clients’ food hampers.
After your act of unselfish philanthropy for the day, you can then take an ‘unselfie’ and you can post the photo on your social media feeds to show that you’ve supported GivingTuesday using the hashtag #StAlbertGives.
More information on the event and each of the charity partners can be found at www.givingtuesday.ca/partners/st-albert-gives.
