The Second Life® community never stands still and it never stands by either. There’s always someone with the energy and courage to step up and do something when something needs to be done. So, now we have more than one charitable event going on at the same time. What to do? Why, shop of course. And why not put together an outfit highlighting items from both events just for fun. That’s what I have done here with items from Vanitas Vesture and Kouse’s Sanctum for Fashion For Life and from Peqe for the Pacific Crisis Fundraiser.

Now, while you are admiring the front view of this gorgeous jacket and texturing details in the skirt and top, I want to take a moment to remind you that the donations are from the creators. If you are getting clothing at the market value at a charitable event, you are not donating, you are shopping. I just think it’s useful to remind ourselves of that when we get ideas about how events should do this or that differently. The donation is coming from the participants who have the energy, talent and courage to put themselves out there on behalf of charities. The rest of us, including me, can support their donations by buying stuff, but we are getting our money’s worth.

Since CNN pulled one sentence out of the paragraph above, some people who did not read the post have gotten the impression that I think our participation in charity events does not count.  As you can see from what is bolded, that is not true. However,  the key ingredient to conflict is isolating an opinion from context to make it more polarizing, which is what happened, unintentionally as it probably is.  No fundraising event can happen without the synergy between the people who contribute items to sell and those who buy. Much of the shopping is motivated by the desire to support the effort and to raise funds and people often buy more than they planned.  I know I sure do.

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