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"    Published in the August 2013 issue My wife and I were once lucky people. We could give small amounts of money to an esoteric collection of causes, from Amnesty International to a local sanctuary for homeless donkeys. We could do that because we had not yet been intimately connected to a cause, painfully and specifically, by our fates or the fate of someone we love. We rarely said no, but we weren&amp;#039;t especially generous or mindful about our giving, because we didn&amp;#039;t have to be. Now we give most of our donations each year to the Children&amp;#039;s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), in our former hometown of Ottawa. We do that because the doctors and nurses at CHEO saved the life of our first son, Charley. He was born several weeks early with a heart defect that caused his heart to beat too rapidly. After weeks of in utero effort to gear him down, they finally cut Charley out of my wife and saved him with electricity, and then a nurse watched over him for twenty-four hours a day, and then we got to take him home and, not long ago, watch him become seven years old.  Contrary to whatever corporate devilspeak you&amp;#039;ve heard about Canadian health care, Charley received beautiful, perfect attention from beautiful, perfect people, and it did not cost us a cent. Our fellow Canadians paid for Charley&amp;#039;s profitless care with their taxes and donations, for which we will remain forever grateful. It became important to my wife and me that we give money to CHEO, as much as we could every month for the rest of our lives, in some futile attempt to repay the debt that we owe. It is a nonnegotiable commitment, charged automatically to my credit card so that we can never forget or make an excuse to skip a stretch. Seven years later, it&amp;#039;s become as routine as a mortgage payment, but we never just do it.  Every month I look at my credit-card statement, and CHEO FOUNDATION OTTAWA is the one charge I always feel good about. I return to the place Charley was born, to the best and worst day of my life; I think about the medicine they poured into my wife and the tiny twin burns on Charley&amp;#039;s chest; I think about the nurse who appeared out of the walls to ease me into a chair when she could see, after it was over and we knew Charley had been saved, that I was going down. I think about all of it again whenever we get a letter from CHEO telling us that we&amp;#039;ve reached some new level of donor \u2014 because even small regular donations can really add up \u2014 or that Charley&amp;#039;s name will now go on a wall or we can come for a tour. While we have never mustered the strength to go back to that building, those little messages never fail to transport me inside it, to those moments when I looked through fogged glass or the lid of Charley&amp;#039;s little plastic box and felt powerless, helpless, and all I was left with was hope. Today, a whole economic system has been put into place so I can do more than hope. I can work, for which I receive money, which I can give to CHEO, where I know it will help make sick children well. It isn&amp;#039;t thoughtless money or guilty money or invisible money. I wouldn&amp;#039;t even call it money well spent. It&amp;#039;s the reason money exists for me, so that I might do the single best thing I do with it, and it makes me feel lucky again, luckier than I&amp;#039;ve ever been. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/money/a23406/how-to-give-to-charity-0813/>