Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Charity vs. Relationships
In the past, I've discussed philanthropy here and here. In this weekend's Slate, Tim Harford makes "The Economic Case Against Charity" by explaining how easy it is to influence people's charitable donations. (It helps, for example, if the people doing the fundraising are attractive white women.) He concludes, "None of this is to say that these contributions are worthless or economically insignificant. Just don't get too starry-eyed about the motives behind them."
He also argues that for most people, it makes more economic sense to simply work more hours, and donate the money earned to charity. That way, professionals can provide efficient services to people in need. I would argue, though, that performing acts of service--even inefficient ones--are important precisely because they also benefit the people who do them and open their eyes to a broader world. Service has the potential to bring together people of varied backgrounds to create community, which, in our stratified society, is a worthy end in itself.
Today I met some of the students I'll be working with on the StudioSTL anthology project. The kickoff reception brought together a local newspaper columnist (the guest speaker), at-risk college-bound high school students, teachers, and writers. Part of the point of the project is to pair the students with nonteachers from the St. Louis community who can give them a different perspective on writing.
In general, I've found that if you work long enough with a group like this, you have to move beyond the simplistic paradigm of "I have resources that I will condescend to bestow upon you." When I was in England, for example, I was a home visitor for an elderly, nearly blind woman. When I signed up for the project, I thought of it as my helping a lonely old woman. What I found, though, was that our weekly Sunday teas helped my homesick self as well. Neither of us had family nearby, and we were both happy to have someone to talk to. She was curious to hear about American life, and she gave me insight into people who weren't part of the university community. Of course, it makes sense that she and I would both gain something from our visits; just as human beings need food and shelter, we also need relationships and multiple roles in the world. The fact that this kind of "charity" benefits everyone involved is not a weakness, but a strength.
He also argues that for most people, it makes more economic sense to simply work more hours, and donate the money earned to charity. That way, professionals can provide efficient services to people in need. I would argue, though, that performing acts of service--even inefficient ones--are important precisely because they also benefit the people who do them and open their eyes to a broader world. Service has the potential to bring together people of varied backgrounds to create community, which, in our stratified society, is a worthy end in itself.
Today I met some of the students I'll be working with on the StudioSTL anthology project. The kickoff reception brought together a local newspaper columnist (the guest speaker), at-risk college-bound high school students, teachers, and writers. Part of the point of the project is to pair the students with nonteachers from the St. Louis community who can give them a different perspective on writing.
In general, I've found that if you work long enough with a group like this, you have to move beyond the simplistic paradigm of "I have resources that I will condescend to bestow upon you." When I was in England, for example, I was a home visitor for an elderly, nearly blind woman. When I signed up for the project, I thought of it as my helping a lonely old woman. What I found, though, was that our weekly Sunday teas helped my homesick self as well. Neither of us had family nearby, and we were both happy to have someone to talk to. She was curious to hear about American life, and she gave me insight into people who weren't part of the university community. Of course, it makes sense that she and I would both gain something from our visits; just as human beings need food and shelter, we also need relationships and multiple roles in the world. The fact that this kind of "charity" benefits everyone involved is not a weakness, but a strength.
posted by Tess | 4:56 PM
2 Comments:
I volunteered as a religious education teacher for a number of years and I can say with 100% certainty that they can more back to me then I did in my service. It was absolutely a two-way street as you said.
I very much agree with you, Tess, in your criticism of Harford for ignoring the reciprocal benefits of active service as opposed to simply donating money. I would take it even further to say that trying to make more money to donate instead of volunteering completely ignores the fact that many ways of making lots of money in the world are themselves contributing to world problems. To take a simple example, if you run a big chemical company with a plant in a poorer country (or poorer area of the U.S.), and you decide that you can make more money to give to charity by polluting more, you might be doing even more harm to the health of the nearby residents than you could ever do good by donating money to health clinics for the poor. That example is clear-cut, but so many of our other decisions that allow us to make more money (or save money) might also have negative effects on the lives of others. We invest in companies that make bombs and weapons, or cigarettes, or whatever. We can (sometimes) save money by shopping at WalMart, but they have degraded workers' living standards around the globe. There are so many things in our lives to think about that I could never accept some economist's simplistic argument that ignores all these complicating factors. Moreover, if you believe in democratic decision-making, there is something inherently problematic about letting rich people set our society's priorities through their charitable donations. The grain of truth in Harford's critique is that many people want to give money to charity in order to feel good about themselves--hence, their interest in becoming active volunteers. In some cases, charity can be demeaning and patronizing to its recipients. I myself have made this very point, in (for example) urging volunteers at my church when we were giving things away to poor people at an inner-city center for the homeless not to insist on physically handing over things themselves (in order to receive the thanks of recipients) but merely to leave them to be distributed later. I think we always need to be sensitive of such things in our charity when it is most clearly a one-sided, short-term thing, but, on the other hand, when we can form longer-term relationships with "needy" people, we can learn a lot and (as both Tess and counting_blessings point out) probably gain at least as much in return. Those of us who live (even modestly) comfortable lives are the truly "needy" ones in the spiritual sense, for we need to do something serious in our lives to address our moral obligations to the less fortunate of the world. And we "need" to learn much more about their lives and circumstances. I think that the wealthy are probably the "neediest" of all in some ways, because they must constantly be on the look out ways to spend all the money they have to help and empower others; it is truly a hard road to follow (didn't Jesus compare it to a camel going through a needle's eye?) given the huge ethical obligation that the rich have to give up control over their money to the less powerful.
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