Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

[rant]

Ok, this really isn't directed personally at anyone.  But ... dammit... I hate it when people make a statement followed by a "but".  Hmm... let me start over.

Donations to causes.  Donations to faceless causes.  As in, you're giving money but you don't REALLY know what's going to happen to it.  Everyone does it.  It's a tax write-off.  Why wouldn't we?

In the face of that, how do real causes raise money?  I posted yesterday about Chanisa's issue, but who really reads my blog?  And of the people that do, and see that post, who will actually send me an email and tell me they want to help?  Admittedly, and of a great credit to them, a couple of buddies at Dos tonight told me they'd help in whatever way they can.  Awesome!  But I see them every day and I told them what was going on before I ever posted about it.  To me, this is a "real" cause.  It's not faceless.  I admit, to most readers it IS faceless.  You've never met her, and in fact you don't really know that she really exists (with the exception of the picture posted below... but really, that could be anyone) (that was a lot of "really"'s).  But that's not the point.  This is a REAL person.  Not a faceless organization.  Which leads me to the original cause of this rant (and again... no personal slight on anyone that may draw similarities to what follows with themselves).

I got an invitation today to join a Facebook group.  "HELP [friend] RAISE $2500 FOR THE RIDE TO CONQUER CANCER".  So my question is... can I start a Facebook group called "HELP CHANISA RAISE $1000 TO REMOVE HER TUMOR"?  Can I invite the same people, linking to my previous blog post?  Would this be in poor taste?  This group already has 30 members.  If every member of this group donated $20 (CAD) to help Chanisa we'd have 17,766 baht.  That's 60% of the money she needs (as an aside, she's decided to go to a government hospital which means the gov't will cover a majority of the costs, and her costs have been reduced to around 30,000; still a huge sum when the average wage here is around 6000 baht a month).  This is a person vs. a cause.  Not sure what to do.

Confused.

[/rant]