Sophomore Autumn WongChong rummaged through her closet pulling out all the clothes she didn’t wear anymore. She folded and placed them into an old cardboard box, ready to take them to Goodwill. WongChong had just packed an old Camp Tekoa T-shirts and jeans three sizes too small when she remembered what her mom had told her about Goodwill being in the news. She wondered if she should really be giving away her clothes to them.
The organization Goodwill has been seen in the news in past months for paying their disabled employees less than minimum wage. Nationally this is affecting 300,000 of their employees who are being paid less for their physical or mental disability.

“I don’t think that it’s right that they go through all the trouble just to get the certificate to pay disabled employees less for something they can’t help,” WongChong said. “If they are working just as hard as anyone else then it’s just unfair.”

Along with Goodwill, there has also been controversy about The Salvation Army. They have had a consistent problem with the LGBT community and discriminating against teenage boys because of their age. A boy in Tennessee was rejected entry to a Salvation Army shelter because he was too old to sleep on the womens side, but was too young to sleep on the side with the men. In a letter addressing the issues the Christian charity has had with the LGBT community it says, “Leadership roles in denominational activities such as teaching or holding local officer roles require certain adherence to consistently held spiritual beliefs. This would apply to any conduct inconsistent with Salvation Army beliefs and would include same-sex sexual relationships.”

Around Christmas time you see the red buckets and chiming bells outside of almost every store you walk into. Your spare change is going to that organization, but not many people know who it’s really contributing to.

“Gays need to be put to death,” is one of the things included in the Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine. It mentions many chapters that speak of the “sin of homosexuality.” The Salvation Army backs up their actions by saying that in Romans 1:18-32 it mentions that homosexuals “deserved to die.”
Another charity, known as Angel Tree, is an organization that works to help the less fortunate in local communities. This program gifts clothes and toys to kids in the community that would otherwise not get anything for Christmas. West has been participating in Angel Tree projects for about 20 years now. This project involves putting gift cards on a Christmas tree for disadvantaged students in our community that go to the school. A group outside of the school has come and said that our Angel Tree is “a waste of time and money.”

“They had some good points like the one about their parents just signing up so they could take the money and the kids wouldn’t even be able to use it, I thought that was a valid reason,” WongChong said.

The group outside of West arguing for us to end the funding of our Angel Tree was saying that the parents of the homeless kids we’re giving giftcards or money to, would just take them from the kids and spend them on things for themselves. They argued that the kids wouldn’t get to spend the money on themselves, so why even do it?

“They don’t know anything for sure,” WongChong said. “They’re just making assumptions about the children’s parents. Unless they have proof that this is actually happening, then they have no right to say we should stop funding something we’ve been doing for 20 years.”

Nowadays there’s no real way to know who you’re giving your money to. People are giving their clothing and other possessions to organizations like Goodwill and The Salvation Army but then are later finding out they are donating their time and money to organizations that hold beliefs they may not agree with.

“At first I didn’t know about Goodwill paying their disabled employees less until you just told me,” sophomore Sophia Walker said. “But now that I know I feel differently about giving money to people who believe that it’s humane to discriminate against people because of something they were born with, and can’t help.”

By Valeka Ramakis