Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday and your social media will likely be flooded with pleas for money from nonprofits around the world. With over a decade of experience in the nonprofit world, I have been on both the donor side and “in the trenches” sweating my bum off trying desperately to make a difference any way I knew how. The conclusion I have come to is…both roles matter. You can’t have one without the other. Organizations cant survive without funds, and the public can’t change the world without a cause to believe in.

I moved to Haiti in 2012. Not long after, a hurricane swept through the nation. As that was taking place, I suddenly came down with an (at the time) unidentified illness. I woke up feeling fine, but was delirious and passing into deep sleeps by evening. I don’t remember much about the week following. Most of it was spent in extreme exhaustion with 20+ hour sleep cycles. My fever was high, but my mind was innocent.

We are all at a standstill. Some of us have been on lock down for weeks. We find ourselves trying to find a new way to do life, homeschool children, and make ends meet. Others of us are on the front lines, sacrificing our own well-being for the health of others. Many of us are between the two, trying to make sense of the new normal and find comfort in whatever protective measures we have placed around us.

People don’t wake up racist. In fact, most of us would not even consider ourselves racist. And honestly that is the dangerous part. We pretend like we don’t see color. We say things like “they” and “them” without realizing it. These microaggressions are the underlying proof of the our prejudice inside our hearts. You see, we all have it.

In recent years voluntourism has become a new trend. Some describe it as the perfect blend of adventure and good-will. Travel companies are celebrating the new trend by offering international volunteers a chance at “helping” developing countries through service projects such as building houses, or digging a well. Although this may seem to be an innocent and well intentioned act, studies are beginning to show that it can be very harmful to the receiving country and promote paternalism.

Whether you’re a parent, an auntie or uncle, or a daily doer of good, we can pretty much all agree that we want the next generation to be even better than the last. Although it’s cliche, children really are the future, and the planet is in their hands. This reality stirs up an emotionally charged debate as we begin to consider if we really are setting our little ones up for success.

It is no surprise to any of us that gender equality is a hot topic in our culture right now. But, what if it extends beyond our culture? What if it is more than just about being an American Citizen and is really about being a citizen of the world. Living outside of the United States does not make women immune to the oppressive powers of a biased economy, or the struggles of breaking into the job market. As women, we are joined together by the unified battle in finding our voice.

We’ve all done it. Taken that sweater with the hole in it and that half broken shoe and donated it to Goodwill, just wanting it to be out of our closet, and out of our house. We’ve all had good intentions, but is that enough? And what happens to those clothes that don’t sell at Salvation Army anyway? With the U.S. consuming more than 11 million tons of textiles each year, the surplus has to go somewhere. But where is this somewhere?

She tried to give me her baby. I was fresh off the plane from sunny San Diego California, just a few days since I first stepped foot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I had barely had time to wrap my mind around the initial culture shock and seemingly desperate reality of the poor. And there I was. In the middle of chaos when a women whom I have never met before turned to me, knowing I was a foreigner, and tried to hand me her child.

There are more slaves today than in the history of the world. Have you heard this before? It is a heavy phrase that can get thrown around as an attempt to pull heart strings, and it does. But, is there any truth to it? Who are these slaves and where do they exist? Modern day slavery is in fact, a very real thing. It is a complex, underground, and underreported problem. It is also full of misconceptions.