Years ago, when I was working on the cruise ships, I saw a film that really struck a chord with me. It was played on a loop every Tuesday on one of the ship's in house channels. It was called "Pay it forward" and it had the kid from the "Sixth Sense" in it. This kid did an experiment for his school project where he had to do 3 acts of kindness and the only thanks he asked was for those people to pay it forward to other people.
My own "Pay it forward" happened this last year and it's pretty much changed my whole outlook on life.
It started when a couple of my friends heard of some children's homes in San Roque that were in real dire straits. They sent out an appeal for clothes, food and blankets and the response was overwhelming. When I heard about the homes I felt bad. There I was moaning that "I'm skint" when in reality I truly wasn't. I had a job, food in my cupboard and a roof over my head. It was at that point I decided to really get involved.
Over the next few months all of us really made a difference to these children's lives. The high point for me was being able to deliver masses of gifts on Christmas Day, all of which had been donated by the wonderful people of Costa del Sol. The homes were slowly looking better and we were replacing the fridges and tumble dryers etc. Eventually, we decided to set up an umbrella charity so that anything bought for these homes would belong to the charity and if anything happened we could take the items back and redistribute. Unfortunately, the homes did end up closing in January because the funds weren't managed properly by the association running them and the children were all split up and sent to different regions around Spain.
We were devastated. We tried to resurrect the homes, but it just wasn't possible. As we had already started to set up our charity we decided that we could still help others and continued with the process. The final red tape was completed about a month ago and our new charity, The Charitable Society of St. George, was born.
Our first big task in an official capacity was to try and do another Christmas present appeal but this time for local children from underprivileged families in the Manilva area. We linked up with Social Services and they gave us the numbers of children that fall into this category. I was shocked at how many there actually are. Just in our small municipality, there are over 300 children who need help. Reasonably, we could not collect that many presents so we pared it down to boys and girls between 3 and 12. Still 235 of them but hopefully manageable. I did a count last night and we are still 150 presents short so if you are reading this and want to help, please let me know....
Another big project we have in the pipeline is a shop where all proceeds go to helping local people. We have signed the lease and hopefully we can open mid January 2014. It's very exciting and also a bit scary. We are looking for stock for the shop and also volunteers to do shifts in the shop so again, let me know if you can help.
I can't tell you how rewarding it has been over the last year. To actually see the results first hand is amazing. When I lived in the UK I used to donate to Children in Need and Comic Relief etc., but I never gave a second thought to the results of my small donation. Now I see all the good that is being done and it's addictive (in a good way). Over the last year I have met so many people who want to make a difference (even if it's only small) and to be honest it has restored my faith in humanity. We see so many awful things on the TV it's nice to know there are still people out there who care.
Pay it forward is a simple idea and if everyone did it, wouldn't the World be a better place for it......
Merry Christmas everyone.xx