During the holiday (and really any day during the year), hearing about warm and fuzzy stories are always a nice way to fill in the relatively slow news cycle. Plenty of Americans like to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" and "Miracle on 34th Street" for that cheerful feeling. While those are works of old Hollywood fiction, there are great stories out in the real world. For the Sampson family in Aberdeen, MD their holiday miracle was fueled by an entity not around just a few years ago, the blogosphere.
See, the family was over-run by injuries, an unexpected pregnancy, being out of work, having cars repossessed and nearly losing their home. Right before they were about to be booted from their homes in this terrible economic environment, a friend of theirs, Jaki Grier was jokingly asked for $10,000 to stave off the bank from foreclosing on them. Well, Jaki didn't donate much, but the blogging she did brought in even more.
From CNN:
At the most, Jaki thought she could raise enough money to help the Sampsons pay a security deposit on an apartment after their home was auctioned.
But donations started pouring in. Within 24 hours, Grier's blog had raised $1,000, far exceeding her expectations. People started linking to Grier's blog from sites across the Internet and around the country.[...]
"Everybody wants to give to a charity, but so many times when you give to a charity you don't really see where your money goes," Grier said. "At least with this, you saw the little [donations] ticker go. I think that made people excited."
Four days after Grier's blog post, she had raised $3,400 -- enough to repair the Sampsons' car. That night, Grier went to bed ecstatic. The next morning she checked her PayPal account and was stunned to find the balance had ballooned to $10,900.
And it got even better from there. With over $11,000 taken in, the local traditional media station got word and things got even better. Someone watching the local station gave Mr. Sampson a job. Charitable outpourings from the community have happened plenty of times before, but in no way has it been this easy to post a story and get such an immediate reaction. A project can spread by word of mouth, but on the blogs it goes like wildfire. Cheers to the power of the net and to everyone that helped the Sampson's keep their home.
|