Can You Spare A Dime, Brother?

Sparing a dime, could you do it?

What if every American "spared a dime"?

Let's see....that would come to roughly $31.4 million dollars!

What good could we do with such a sum as that?

Well we already know the answer, because it has been done before!

A young cancer patient in Boston, Massachusetts, we will call him "Jimmy" was the inspiration for "The Jimmy Fund." Perhaps he didn't know the power of a dime when given generously by enough people. He just wanted a TV in his hospital room, so he could watch his favorite baseball team. When his interview was aired nationally, $200,000 poured in! Some TV set that would buy!

Now that "Jimmy Fund" has evolved to where the incoming donations fund research into possible cures for various forms of childhood cancers.

Did you know the story of "The March of Dimes"? It is widely credited with funding the finding of a cure for infantile paralysis, polio, the same disease which robbed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the use of his legs. The result was the Salk Vaccine, the "polio shot" which now protects against the disease.

"The Jimmy Fund" and "The March of Dimes' have continued by somewhat different titles to fund crucial research into cancer and preventing infant mortality. Children were the original fundraisers. They could "spare a dime" and make a difference, and even set an example and mobilize public opinion, and generosity.

Locally I am familiar with two similar fundraisers. "Pennies By The Inch" which raises significant funds each year for the children's hospital in Salt Lake City, and "Quarters For Christmas" which each year in December raises enough money to buy thousands of pairs of shoes for needy children so they can have quality footwear during the winter months."Toys For Tots" is another significant fundraiser so that our neediest American children may have a good toy or game at Christmas time.

And The Salvation Army has its annual fundraiser at that same time of the year. Their volunteers, many of whom have been helped by The Salvation Army, can be seen (and heard!) ringing bells outside stores and public facilities, standing beside the traditional red pot with its slot for our donations which fund their shelters and meals for some of the poorest of America's poor.

Can you spare a dime, brother?

Your dime, or dollars, might just cure the next dread disease, feed a hungry person a good, hot meal, put shoes on a child's bare feet, provide for hospital care for a child and a stay for their parents at a Ronald McDonald House so they can be near their sick child.

$31.4 million dollars? That's a lot of "small change" for such big changes.

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Copyright 2012 Demas W. Jasper All rights reserved.