something about oprah

Ahhh… the holidays! A time of snow, Christmas cookies, family, friends, presents, childhood memories, and non-profit organizations. Giving has always been associated with the holidays, but do we volunteer during the holiday season out of love and generosity or guilt?
The only time we think about volunteering outside of November and December is if there are a required number of community service hours for school or if you got caught toilet papering, pumpkin stealing, or are a suspected terrorist and the court system gives you forty hours of community service. Either way, not a lot of teens are used to volunteering out of the goodness of their hearts when there are so many other things keeping us busy, like snowball fights, House marathons on TV, shopping on Amazon.com and daydreaming about singing snowman.
So, why do we tend to volunteer or give money to an organization we’ve never heard of during this season? I would bet on guilt. There are a lot of good-hearted people out there who do volunteer on regular basis because they want to be inducted into sainthood, but the majority of teens are in need of financial assistance themselves so they don’t see the purpose of philanthropy. If we are charity cases, why give to charities?
Maybe I am only speaking for myself here, but I’m guessing that there are some other people out there that also feel guilty for not being as charitable as Oprah. What’s so great about Oprah anyways!? So, she gives a lot of money to poor people. That’s because she has a ton of money. She is literally one of the richest people in the world, and I don’t see her solving world hunger. Oprah is worth 2.7 billion dollars. I am worth about 1, 300 dollars. So what do I have to donate in ordered to be equal to Oprah, since I can’t start a school in Africa. Here is the math: Oprah earns roughly about 275 million dollars a year and she donates about 50.2 millions dollars a year. That is about 18% of her income. OK, that’s kind of a lot, but that’s less than 2% of her net worth. So, since I’m worth 1,300 dollars I could donate 2% of my wealth which is about 26 dollars and be semi-equal to Oprah. That’s doable.