Giving without charity

Why the promotion of “charitable work” devalues the giving

all day every day. It is the burning restlessness to remember that nothing distinguishes me from Terry, the man with vacant eyes begging. His begging is a veil that masks a forgotten truth: so easily our roles could be reversed..

Schools Are Complicit In Externalising Selflessness

Schools create reciprocal partnerships with orphanages, set up schools in “developing” nations and encourage students to fast for 40 hours per year in order to raise awareness about how others live. Ostensibly such activities are to round out the education of the privileged by acknowledging that there are many less fortunate. By way of brief, highly controlled contact there is the thought that the experience is authentic. My interviewing of students who have had such experiences report that they are “life changing”. When asked “how” they might say, “I appreciated that people suffer more than I knew”.

But does it change how they spend money?

Almost never. Does it change their ambitions? Almost never. Does it create a fearlessness to seek out opportunities to work towards the amelioration of suffering, quietly? Almost never. Charitable works become less charitable when promoted on social media or publicised as a “humble brag”. They become devalued in school newsletters, on business websites and on CVs when the giving was a once-off opportunity.

Local And Global

Giving without charity is so endemic that I believe it will only be when students, families, schools, businesses and other institutions embrace the local needs of the most vulnerable people that we will begin to truly appreciate the extent of suffering and inequity around us. Spending time with women sheltering from domestic violence, listening to the homeless and those with mental illness on our streets, and giving in non-publicised ways should be the measure of the genuineness of charitable works. Of course, there are others in nations far away who live immeasurably poorer lives than us. However, a combined focus on local as well as those distant will better remind us that we are not so far away from suffering and we should keep that in mind often.

Families and educators can begin this process by forgetting the CV and the photo opp, and feeling - not just in occasional onceoff moments - the depth of pain felt by people they do not know through meeting and spending ongoing time with them.