Learning to Read
Today, I had the pleasure of meeting Sam. Sam works for Dialogue Direct – a company that represents various charities and in this instance the charity represented was Children International. You all know this company – they are famous for showing a sad, starving child on TV and then indicate that with your sponsorship, this child will get the food he/she needs to survive and an education. As the commercial progresses, the sad child is transformed to a happy child, all with the help of the price of a cup of coffee per day. You may notice the hint of cynicism in my tone but I really am trying to keep an open mind.
Getting back to Sam. As I walk down the 16th Street Mall of Denver, she approaches me, thrusts out her hand and says in a very confident, spirited voice, “Hi, I’m Sam.” I reply with telling her my name. Sam then proceeds to tell me that our names are a lot alike. “They are?” I ask. “Yes, they are each one syllable and a vowel in the middle.” This amuses me and admittedly I like her sales technique. She asks where I am headed and I indicate a book store. “Do you think everyone should be able to read?” “Of course.” “That’s great.” My curiosity which has been piqued throughout this perfunctory dialogue was finally satisfied when she told me about how I could sponsor a child in a third world country.
As I said, I liked her technique and if I am being completely honest I have thought of the whole child sponsorship thing before. Saying that, I am not one to make a hasty decision and I was not about to fill out all my personal details on a clipboard in the middle of downtown. I told her I will look it up online and make my decision that way. Not one to back down – which I did really find admirable – she indicated we could look at the site right now on her phone. I declined and said “I can bring it up on my own phone and I am honestly not blowing you or this off. I will have a deeper look when I have the opportunity.”
Once I got home I kept to my word. I looked up Children International on the web and of course the site is as you would expect. There is an opportunity to sponsor children from Chile, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, Philippines or Zambia. This is a representation of some of the poorer nations in the world. Now I am faced with a dilemma. Should I or should I not? I really do try not to be cynical but it is becoming more and more difficult in this day and age. There are reports all the time of misappropriated funds or perhaps even more deplorable, funds and aid that is meant to get to “XYZ” country ends up in the hands morally bankrupt individuals. Case and point – aid for the Haiti earthquake victims. The starving then remain starving and possibly die thus the cycle continues.
Here is another part of the dilemma. I love to help others and I think deep down, the vast majority of our population does too. Some people have taken advantage of this and pray upon our giving nature to line their own pockets. That aside, I could not find any real evidence that Children International belongs to this group of nasty organizations. They appear quite legitimate actually. This adds more favor to the “should I” category.
Perhaps I am over-analyzing this but here is another aspect that plays on my mind. Granted these countries are filled with very impoverished people and my heart goes out to them. All of the things we take for granted every day such as clean water, healthy food and an education could very well be considered luxuries to children of these countries and that of course plays upon the empathy of not only me but so many others. So, what’s the problem? Well, when downtown today, if I would have walked 20 blocks one direction and a few more in another, I would have found myself at the Denver Rescue Mission. While it is true, the seemingly majority of those you will find in this part of town are drunks, there are also families. They lack access to most of the things Juan lacks access to in Chile. Should I not help those in my own community before I reach out to someone a few thousand miles away? Perhaps I could do both?
When I started this post I was hoping the cynical side of me could be set aside a little by the time I ended the post. It seems to have worked. I will help a child in Chile but I am also going to help families locally. I will keep you updated on the progress.
I think you are a good person who wants to help, but you also want to do good in most effective way.
I like your idea of giving both locally and internationally. It has been said that it is easier to help a stranger than a friend. I think this is true because we know the bad side of those acquaintances who always need help.
I spent 2 years in the Philippines as a missionary and met the adoptive mother of one of those sponsored children. She was a very good caring person. She was paid a certain amount to help with the care of the formerly abandoned child. At one point the funding was cut off because the local organization was not meeting all of the requirements of the international organization. She was in a moral quandry. She of course decided to keep her adopted daughter, but what had formerly been a financial help was now a financial burden. I am not sure if they were able to get funding again later on. I hope so.
When it comes to helping children especially, I think we should all do something. Even if some of our money is wasted, it is important to put the cynic aside and do what we can. The Phillippines has one of the highest rates of child homelessness in the world. It is tragic to see children begging in the streets. If I could pay a small amount each day to put one them in a home and send them to school, I would do it, every time.
On my last trip to the Philippines I met the president for a charitable organization called American Helper http://americanhelper.com/ . I believe it to be a small organization which is doing a lot of good with street children. I agree that you have to be a cynic before throwing your money around. We need to be as smart about giving money away as we are about earning it. But I think if we are financially able, and if we can find an organization that is reputable, we should do our part. Then we can watch those commercials in peace.
In the long run I think that we need to create more jobs in poverty stricken areas. I am optimistic about improvement in the world economy. While I don’t like loosing jobs locally, I also know that those jobs are needed wherever they land. Education is of course the other half of the coin. Without it, there will always be a world-wide epidemic of ignorance and poverty.
-Aaron