This Black Friday, a couple of days before Giving Tuesday, we wanted to mention something.

While Giving Tuesday is a great part of our culture and shows that we as a country care about helping others, we also want to be mindful that we don’t end up commodifying the poor that we are trying to help in the process. We encourage you to be a part of Giving Tuesday this year, not out of guilt for justifying Holiday purchases and not with a mindset that we are “saving” anyone with our donations. Instead, we think Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the ethos and story of non-profit organizations and the relationships they’re a part of. Absolutely, we’d love for you to financially support us and our goal of raising $2,500 this Tuesday, but we dare you not to let that be the end of it! Check out our website, watch some of our videos, scroll through our social media, look up some pictures of Cascade Pichon on google. Anything we can do to remind ourselves that the people on the other end of our work are people and not merely objects for receiving our humanitarian aid is good community development practice, in our opinion.