C.H.A.N.G.E. Team's Blog: Making a Difference With a Click

Making a difference can never get any more easier... All that you need to do to feed a hungry child or two, is to go to these three websites:

... and click the "Click here to Give" button!

Websites earn money by the amount of traffic they get and also by the number of advertisements [which depend on traffic, by the way] it displays. So when you contribute to the website's traffic, then automatically, the site will begin earning money, which it can then donate for non-governmental organizations, social workers and sometimes directly to the people who are suffering from poverty.

The sad thing is, we are so busy that we can never lose 10 seconds of our precious time to go to that website and just click. Yet, so many of us while away, wandering through social-networking sites like facebook, browsing for latest movies, or some other such thing. Many of us are just that - too busy people who talk and talk about stuff like poverty, disease, etc. but do nothing about it. We just talk. And frankly speaking, there is no difference whatsoever between the people who are so indifferent they don't care if a child starves on some corner of the world, and those who care about fellow humans in general, yet don't do anything useful.

There are a thousand ways to make a difference in real life. But networking and browsing have just made the task a lot easier. We have heard of many people who take great pains to just give. Here is one such story of an poor old lady, her cow and Gaza. The message this story gives out, is that a simple and pure thought or wish is enough to bring about a good happening:

The story of the sufferings and pains suffered by the people of Gaza spread throughout the world. Everybody was fuming in anger, hatred, enmity and rage. Even more people felt sad and were touched when cute little children became victims from the crazy spurt of bullets and bombs, blood were wetting the ground freely.

This terrible tragedy also came to the knowledge of an old lady who lived poorly in one of the villages in Yaman. Just like everybody else, she also felt sad and sorrowful, and she could not help but shed her tears.

One day she was determined to help the best she could. Incidentally, the only ‘asset’ she had was an old cow, it was too sickly, thin and weak.

Equipped with a high spirit and the feeling of extreme sympathy, she intended to give away her cow to the people of Gaza. So she left her house on foot en route to one of the masjids in Yaman while holding her only beloved cow.

Coincidentally, it was Friday and the jama’ah (assemblage) had already swarmed the compound of the masjid to perform the Friday Prayer. The people started to direct their attention and observe the old and poor lady standing outside the masjid with her cow. Some of them nodded, some of them shook their heads and not a few of them smiled cynically or quite the opposite astounded seeing the poor lady standing faithfully beside her cow.

As soon as all the jama’ah completed the solat and do’a, the old lady suddenly hurried and dragged her cow towards the front door of the masjid and waited patiently, unperturbed by the jama’ah walking out of the masjid. Many of them stayed and were curious of what the old woman would do next.

When the Imam of the masjid came out, the old lady bounced up and said: "O Imam, I have heard of the sad story of the people of Gaza. I am a poor person but I sympathize and want to help them. Please accept the one and only cow I have to be brought to Gaza, give it to the people there."

Caught by surprise, the Imam was stunned for a moment by the request of the old lady. And predictably, he was reluctant to accept it. Yeah, how to bring the old cow to Gaza, the Imam questioned. All around, the jama’ah started to murmur. There were those who said that it was an impossible thing to do especially that the cow was already old, it surely had no value.

"Please… take this cow to Gaza. This is all I got. I really want to help them," the unknown woman repeated. The Imam was still reluctant. Every jama’ah talked and whispered to each other. All eyes were fixed on the old lady and her old cow.

The eyes of the old lady started to glaze and well up with tears but she was still unyielding and kept on gazing at the Imam. The atmosphere was filled with silence for a while.

Suddenly, someone from the jama’ah voiced out an idea: "Never mind, let me buy this cow for a price of 10,000 riyals and then bring that money to be donated to the people Gaza."

The Imam appeared to be in agreement. The sad old lady wiped her tears that had already flowed down. She remained speechless but seemed to agree with the suggestion of the jama’ah.

Suddenly, a young man got up and offered an even more remarkable suggestion: "What if we all offer the highest bid while contributing that money to buy the cow and the money will then be delivered to Gaza?"

The woman was surprised, as well as the Imam. It appeared that the idea of the young man was accepted by the crowd. And then in a few minutes, the bids started to roll and a lot of the jama’ah hurried to contribute their money to be collected.

There were those who bid starting from 10,000 to 30,000 riyals and it continued for some time. The atmosphere in the compound of the masjid became noisy when the jama’ah continued to bid non-stop while simultaneously donating their money.

Finally, the old, thin, and feeble cow owned by the old and poor lady was bought for a price of 500,000 riyals (around 148,000 USD)!