How to accidentally host a fundraising dinner

This past summer, we spent a couple of weeks in California at Weimar College, where we will be moving in January. Anaya had the opportunity to make some new friends, which she enjoyed immensely. I was sitting in the house when Anaya dashed inside with her two little friends, shouting, "We got a dollar!"

"Where did you get a dollar?" I asked.

"A man going past gave it to us."

"Why did a man give you a dollar?" Call me a pessimist, but I am a little suspicious of random strange men who hand out money to groups of little girls.

"He just read our sign." She held up a crayoned sign proclaiming, "Money and food for the poor." Having friends old enough to spell had been beneficial to my little philanthropist.

"What are you going to do with that money? He gave that to you so you could help the poor."

"We're going to keep it! I'm poor!" she shouted gleefully. "I don't have any money!" Her friends seemed to think there was nothing wrong with this suggestion, either.

"Well, no," I remonstrated. "You can't keep it. But we can figure out somewhere to send the money to really poor people."

Encouraged by the success of their fundraising venture, Anaya and her little friends launched an expanded campaign. Lunchtime was just beginning, so they darted to the cafeteria and canvassed tables asking for more money for the poor. Soon she was back, exulting over their success.

"Look, Mommy! We got lots of money!" she burst. "And now we're going to have a party!"

I counted 38 dollars from her eager hands. "A party? What do you mean?"

"Oh, I invited them all over to our house for a party," she informed me nonchalantly. "I told them we're going to have snacks and a movie."

"Anaya! We don't have any food, or a TV or VCR or anything."

"Yes, we do have snacks! We picked plums off the tree outside!"

"What about a movie?"

"Oh, I don't know." She shrugged off my obviously silly objections. "We'll figure out something."

Fortunately, her most significant donors didn't take her seriously, so we ended up with a haphazard group of about 8 children under the age of 10, eagerly munching plums and watching a YouTube video about children who raised money to educate children in India. And the fundraising campaigners cheerfully agreed to send their money to help children in an orphanage in Ethiopia.