Not sure if this happens to everyone, but at the end of the year when the holidays approach — Thanksgiving in particular — I tend to step back and reassess what I am doing to positively affect the lives of those around me.

We hear a lot of talk about how a “carbon footprint” left behind by humans will effect the Earth in the long-term. But what about the long-term effects of charitable, selfless acts — or the lack thereof? I call this impact the philanthropic footprint because it seems just as important on the long-term well-being and survival of humanity.

(I’m thinking of a phrase that flows better than “philanthropic footprint,” so suggestions are welcome.)

Of course, until my older years it was mostly ideas and not nearly enough activity. One year I would donate old clothes to GoodWill; another, volunteering at a church event.

This year, I have done my best to step up my own philanthropic footprint by:

• Donating multiple bags of clothing to a church program providing assistance to children in Nicaragua
• Attending and donating to a breast cancer fundraising event hosted by a friend
• Participating in a charity bowling tournament, Bowling For Hope, hosted by Trevor’s Treasures, a charitable organization aimed at providing gifts to children in the long-term care section of the pediatric ward of hospitals.
• On October 15, 2008, I shamelessly promoted a few different charities aimed at stopping poverty around the world in cooperation with a great event, Blog Action Day. I can only hope next year’s event is just as successful.
• Volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen

I have tried to step up my philanthropic footprint in the world, and the best way I know how to encourage others is to make an example of myself.

Cheesy line of the day: Today is always the perfect day to begin working on your philanthropic footprint!

Yesterday, I took the day off work to join a friend and his company in volunteering at the D.C. Central Kitchen. The DCCK is an organization that makes over 4,000 meals a day to distribute among various homeless shelters and halfway houses across the district. According to their orientation leader, as well as their website, they are not just a “soup kitchen” that provides food alone:

As a community kitchen, we recycle over one ton of surplus food each day that would otherwise go to waste and turn it into 4,000 meals for the hungry in the greater Washington, DC region. Among the people preparing these meals are the students of our Culinary Job Training program; once homeless and hungry individuals themselves, these aspiring men and women are equipped with professional and life skills. DC Central Kitchen uses the existing ingredients of our society to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.

My particular group prepared items for a salad, peeling carrots, chopping up and cleaning lettuce, peeling carrots, cutting onions, chopping tomatoes, cutting up cheese squares and — oh yeah! — peeling carrots!

(As you can assume, my least favorite part involved my favorite orange vegetable! Peeling carrots down to little bits was a tedious process but well worth it in the end, of course!)

In the end, we mixed the items together and created dozens of salads we packaged up into big catering trays, set to head out shortly after we finished. We did these things under the command of a very friendly older woman who joked with us despite our inaccurate tomato-cutting, mishaps in following storage directions and overanalyzation of the most simple tasks. Most of the supervisors there were graduates of the work program offered by DCCK, many whom were homeless, incarcerated or were otherwise without work or training until the program provided it.

Many charitable organizations have the central idea correct, which is helping out those who are in need. Soup kitchens generally provide food to the homeless, but fail to take a step further and find out how they could use their program to assist in the long-term. DCCK is on the right track with their long-term connection, providing cooking, computer and career training classes throughout the year, in order to change the lives of those who could use the help.

This idea reminded me of the old Chinese proverb that holds true through time, addressing this very issue:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”