John Lorigan | Contributing Writer
Like any good essay, I will begin by searching Wikipedia. According to that irrefutable website, charity is defined as the voluntary giving of help to those in need who are not related to the giver. The Concise Oxford Dictionary backs this up, defining it as 1. giving voluntarily to those in need or 2. an institution or organization for helping those in need.
In the article, “Why charity is wrong”, the author mentions several things, including the VDP, global injustice, and how our political system is questionable. The fact that the world is unjust is indisputable. Nevertheless, political systems are not my forte and so I will not give my opinion on something on which I am not well-versed.
In the article there are several claims made about charities, which I shall argue against. In the first mention given to charity, the article states that charity is “an indisputably good act”. In the following paragraph he disputes this, saying “the best people among us… do the worst deeds”. The author reasons that instead of blindly doing charitable work we should be taking account of the structural causes of poverty.
Are people doing this for their “bourgeois ideology”, or because it is the right thing to do?
It mentions three charitable acts you can do; go on a soup run, give money to a beggar, or donate items to a charity shop. While these are certainly possible charitable acts, they are not even the tip of the iceberg. The reason why these forms of charity are wrong, according to the article, is that they merely “alleviate the symptoms of a monstrously diseased system”. That argument forms the bulk of the article.
But what of the other forms of charity? To run with the biological metaphor, what about donating blood? Are people doing this for their “bourgeois ideology”, or because it is the right thing to do? The same could be asked of organ donation.
We are fortunate enough in Trinity to have many charitable societies: FLAC give out free legal advice; Amnesty fight for those who are victims of injustice; Cancer Soc raise funds for cancer research, as well as raising awareness of the disease; S2S provide support and counseling to students; MOVE raise funds for third world hospitals, as well as donating their summer to work in these hospitals; Some of the Trinity charities try to tackle poverty at its roots, through education. SUAS work with local NGOs in India and Kenya to help educate children, and the VTP give grinds to disadvantaged primary and secondary school students who wouldn’t have the means to afford them otherwise. My own society, the VDP does over 20 activities a week, ranging from after school clubs, to working with disabled adults, to, yes indeed, soup runs.
If I may digress slightly, I object to the somewhat throwaway nature with which soup runs are referenced. A soup run consists of going around the city centre, and giving out soup and tea to homeless people you meet. But, to dust off my book of clichés, you are giving far more than soup. Father Peter McVerry, a man with many years experience in this area, says that the worst part of being homeless is not the cold, the discomfort, the hunger or the boredom; the worst part is the feeling that nobody cares about you. By going on a soup run, you are taking time out of your day to show that somebody does care.
We live in an unfair world. I could bore you with all of the wrongs that exist, but you are already aware. That’s life.
Charity is a way of dealing with some of those wrongs. It is not, as stated, “a strategy for eliminating poverty”. When I volunteer with the VDP this is not my driving thought. I am under no illusions about the work I do; I could stop and most things would go on as they always were. Yet every time I volunteer, I am making a short-term difference to someone’s life. Now reading that, it’s quite clear that doing some charitable work could most definitely help someone in the short term, which in the end, is still helping someone that might otherwise struggle. This is why it is so underwhelming to see the statistics and percentages of those that would consider leaving some money to charity after they pass, especially if you are to think they won’t need these material possessions once they do pass, and it could be donated to those that are far less fortunate.
We live in an unfair world. I could bore you with all of the wrongs that exist, but you are already aware. That’s life.
No person should be homeless in a first world country. Yet there are homeless. Soup runs and homeless shelters are a way of helping them in this difficult time in their lives.
No-one should have their basic human rights taken away from them. Yet all over the world we see such injustices. Raising awareness and putting pressure on the relevant groups, as done by Amnesty, helps reduce and hopefully stop such wrongs.
Charity is a way of dealing with some of those wrongs. It is not, as stated, “a strategy for eliminating poverty”
No-one deserves to have cancer. And yet it has touched most people, directly and indirectly. Giving your money for research, or giving your time to raise awareness, helps.
What the author of “Why charity is wrong” believes “is precisely needed when it comes to the problem of poverty is not a pound, but … critical thinking about capitalism”. You can have the best minds doing the best thinking, but without the pounds to back it up, you rarely change anything. Thinking is an important part of helping those in need, but will do little good if you do not have the pounds (and the actions) to back it up.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for charity. There would be no homelessness, no disease, no torture, no poverty. I would love to live in such a world, but I don’t think such a world will ever exist.
Let’s look at Cancer Soc; they fundraise for the Irish Cancer society. They also raise awareness about the various forms of cancer, through talks and events such as Movember. Long-term, their goal is for cancer to be cured. So unquestionably, these altruistic folk are doing some of the best deeds of people in college.
Let’s look at Suas; they work, at home and abroad, to provide education programmes to the disadvantaged. Through education, these children have a chance of acquiring a good job and supporting themselves. While it easy to sneer at this “voluntourism”, a closer look at their plan shows that they have thought things through, and are equally doing some of the best deeds.
“Charity discourages critical thought.” An easy example of how this is incorrect is to take, again, Cancer Soc. By donating money to cancer research, they are employing scientists to cure cancer. Curing cancer is very hard, and demands critical thinking.
But let us examine the greater implications of that statement; that charities are ignorant, and that they do not comprehend the bigger picture. As I have mentioned, Suas work abroad with local NGOs to ensure long-term progress. They also have global development workshops for their volunteers, where they discuss why there is an actual need for them to be working where they are. Charities such as Bothar donate livestock. Offspring from these livestock must be passed on to other struggling families in the area, and thus what may have started as a once-off donation has the potential to sow long-term benefits.
While it easy to sneer at this “voluntourism”, a closer look at their plan shows that they have thought things through, and are equally doing some of the best deeds.
When one is actually out in the field, seeing up close the harsh realities they have seen on TV, only then do they truly begin to think and question. I volunteered with a charity in South Africa, and had the opportunity to visit a shanty town near Durban. On a hill overlooking this shanty town were houses that could have belonged in any affluent Dublin suburb. The owners of these houses would have looked out of their windows every morning, past their secure fences, on to hell. A familial connection had given me some knowledge of apartheid, and secondary school religion classes had informed me that there were shanty towns in South Africa, but being out there, volunteering, truly hammered home to me quite how warped their society was. It was an eye-opener that nobody could have told me about, or prepared me for; I had to go and see it for myself.
To expand on my cliché, whenever you give through charity, as a volunteer you get a lot more in return. I was lucky enough to be drawn into the VDP from the very start of first year, and without a doubt it has been the best thing to happen to me in college. I have made some of my best friends in college through the VDP, I have had my best college experiences through the VDP, and I have had the most fun of my life through the VDP. I am sure that my compadres in the other charities will tell you similar stories. Charity is something that everyone should get involved in.
And that is why I bothered responding to the article published in Trinity News. I believe in charity. As a practice, as a theory, as a form of education. I feel that my Trinity experience would be incredibly hollow without it. Feeling grateful, I want to pass on this experience to everyone, from the innocent fresher full of good will, to the cynical fourth year who has always meant to get involved. It is hard work trying to explain charity to someone who has never done it before, as the only way to understand is to simply experience it first hand. Once we get people in, the hard work is done, and they don’t want to leave.
