Giving

“Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve,” Martin Luther King Jr. once said. What I’m doing doesn’t make me great, but I’d at least like to play my part. 

Today, I finished reading Bill Clinton’s Giving, his paean to public service. “How each of us can change the world,” reads the tagline. And Clinton goes through different approaches to how citizens can serve, from giving money and giving time, to giving things and giving skills. 

I was hoping to find further inspiration from the book. Truth be told, Clinton spends too much time talking about Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bono, Carlos Slim, Ira Magaziner and the like. Not very accessible or inspiring to us normal folk. He recognizes the disconnect but just can’t help himself. 

Still, the book reminded me of many worthwhile organizations to reach out to, from Kiva to Ashoka to Global Giving and others. So if his aim was to throw a bunch of ideas at me and see if one would stick, then he may have achieved his goal.