When Generosity Sounds Like a Song: An Invitation to Create Together

At One Day’s Wages, we are endlessly inspired by what happens when people bring their full selves—their creativity, curiosity, and courage—into a shared mission.

Our work to alleviate extreme poverty has always been built on partnership. Not just with grassroots leaders around the world, but with everyday people who ask a simple, powerful question: What do I have to offer? Sometimes that offering looks like a financial gift. Sometimes it looks like time, advocacy, ideas, or imagination.

And sometimes, beautifully, it looks like a song.

This past Giving Tuesday, our community experienced something special through a collaboration with longtime ODW friend and supporter Chris Low. Chris is a special education teacher, instructional coach, singer-songwriter, and children’s author—and someone who believes deeply that creativity itself can be an act of generosity. When we began dreaming together about how to make Giving Tuesday feel meaningful and connective, Chris didn’t just say yes. He leaned in fully.

What emerged was Same Old Feeling—a song by Chris rooted in memory, longing, and the quiet hope that binds us together across distance and difference. Chris generously offered this song as a gift to our giving community, and in doing so reminded us that generosity doesn’t always arrive wrapped in numbers or outcomes. Sometimes it arrives as beauty or as a story or as a song. 

Chris Low on Same Old Feeling

In our first conversations about working together, Carissa and I floated a few ideas about what a partnership might look like. At one point, Carissa asked if I had any holiday music, and like any enthusiastic songwriter, I told her I had something “in the works.” To be fair, it was more of an idea than a song, but it developed quickly over the next few days. By the weekend, I had a demo that would serve as the foundation for the finished project.

 

At the heart of “Same Old Feeling” is nostalgia— a complicated mix of emotions and history woven together in a tapestry of mementos, rituals, and old photographs (like the one of me and my sister dressed up fancy for Christmas Mass, circa 1991).

 

That tapestry is different for everyone, but I do think there are some common threads, and generosity is probably chief among them. During the holidays, when so many of us are enjoying the same songs and traditions, the world tends to feel smaller. It’s a little easier to imagine what life is like for smallholder farmers in Matoh or women launching a small business in Kenya. And in our best moments, that also makes it easier to give, easier to believe that those gifts make a difference.

 

I hope that for you, part of this “same old feeling” is the joy of knowing that we’re all in this together, lifting each other up and doing what we can to bring a little light into the darkness.

 

Thanks for believing in this work, thanks for listening, and happy holidays!

 

Chris

Chris’s words capture something we’ve long believed: generosity is deeply human. It’s woven into memory, ritual, and relationship. And when it’s shared—whether through music, teaching, giving, or showing up—it has the power to collapse distance and remind us that our lives are meaningfully connected to our neighbors around the world. 

This is why partnerships like this matter so much to us. They reflect the very ecosystem we’re trying to nurture in the world: one where people bring their gifts forward in service of something bigger than themselves.

We are profoundly grateful to Chris—not just for a song, but for the way he shows up in the world with kindness, curiosity, and care for both his local and global neighbors. We’re proud to be in this community together.

And this collaboration is also an invitation.

If you’ve ever wondered how your own passions, skills, platform, business, or ideas might help further this mission—we would love to explore that with you. Sometimes it starts with a simple conversation.

Reach out. Let’s grab coffee—virtually or in real life—and imagine together how you might make a difference.

Because when generosity meets imagination, something beautiful can take shape.

There’s still time to purchase the acoustic version of Chris’ holiday song here. He has generously gifted the proceeds back to the work of ODW!