I might have mentioned this series in a post last year, but it's worth another mention. Each year, the New York Times leads a fundraising drive for The Neediest Cases, a coalition of non-profits serving New Yorkers in need. Each day during the fundraising drive, I look forward to reading one of the profiles of someone helped by these charities. They are absolutely touching and heartbreaking, like tomorrow's story on a 37-year-old mother with stage 4 colon cancer.
A Dying Woman's Concerns Are For Her Two Children
Here's the explanation provided by the website about the history of the drive:
On Christmas day, 1911, Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of The New York Times, went out for a walk after a big turkey dinner, and encountered a shabbily dressed man on the street. The man said he had just been given Christmas dinner at a Y.M.C.A. but had nowhere to sleep. The publisher looked him over, decided he looked respectable and gave him a few dollars and his card. "If you’re looking for a job," he said, "come see me tomorrow."
The encounter left the publisher thinking about charity. Helping a stranger had given him a sense of satisfaction, and he wondered if one man’s feeling might be the basis for a city’s goodwill. The next year, he sent a reporter to several of the city’s private welfare agencies to collect stories about the poor. He had a plan: to publish stories about the Hundred Neediest Cases in New York. The appeal would be made not with a direct request for money but with the facts of their lives. These small chronicles, it turned out, sounded a powerful call.
The campaign began December 15, 1912. Soon other publishers in the United States and abroad adopted the idea that a newspaper could make a general appeal for the poor and thus help established welfare agencies solicit funds. Each year, more New York Times readers sent in more money. In 1912, 117 contributors sent in $3,630.88. In 2007-2008, 11,340 readers contributed $7.6 million. All told, the Fund has raised over $237 million in its 97 years.
The mechanics of the appeal have evolved over the years. In 1970, The Times stopped publishing the names of all the contributors. The campaign, no longer limited to a hundred specific cases, distributes its funds to seven participating social welfare agencies. They serve people of all ages and background and in every borough. But the appeal still carries the mark of its founder.
"It was his best-loved project," wrote L.H. Robbins in the Reader’s Digest in December 1937, two years after Adolph Ochs died. "He was quick with suggestions for making it forceful, he scanned every word before it reached print, zealous that no note of self-interest, false sentimentality or preaching should slip in."
The 2008-2009 campaign begins Sunday, Nov. 9, 2008 and will continue through Feb. 6, 2009. As always, The Times covers the campaign’s costs. No money is taken from the Fund for administration. Cases of notable relieved distress are the subject of daily articles in the newspaper and The Times online. The participating agencies are audited on a regular basis. They are:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE
THE CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS
THE CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
THE COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
THE FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES, INC
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK
2 comments:
It is so heartbreaking, but thanks for sharing! I love stories that give me a much needed impetus to think outside myself and my family during Christmas (not to mention the rest of the year)
At a grocery store in S.C. they had pre-made grocery bags filled with food at different prices. Some were as low as $6, some as high as $20. You just put the bags into your cart and they rang them up and then donated them to a local charity. Not as cool or wide-ranging as the NY Times, but a very easy way to make someone's holiday better all the same. I wish our stores here in DC did something like that. How was your turkey day?
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