Can one man make a difference?

democrates

metrovelvet wrote:

My value system is very case by case.

Two of the things I'm most proud of having doing is one, worked with Habitat for Humanity and also finding my friends birth mother for him after 17 years of failure trying with Bernardos and private detectives. I also from time to time donate to my friends theatre group in Venezuela which works with poor children in rural areas because I trust him to run it economically and that it will go into the right hands.

In New York City I see A LOT of sufferring -as you can imagine - if i felt compassion for everyone I would be exhausted. No one can do that. You need to be selective and when you are making your choice makesure you are helping the sufferring and not paying for expensive letterhead.

I dont give money to charity ever. I will give my time however, because then I know myself where the commodity or service is going. I hate admin and I wont support it EVER.

My hat off to you, that's very laudable. I agree you can't suffer an emotional toll for every hardship you come accross, you'd traumatise yourself, it's a bit like a surgeon has to retain a level of detachment so they can focus as much as possible on doing the most professional job they can with a clear mind and steady hand. And yes, it would be a foolish strategy to decide to be miserable until everyone else is happy, I don't get upset any more, I just do what I think is right and be content with myself.

The theatre group you donate to surely have overheads? I think we're agreed that waste is not acceptable, and there have been some wholesale abuses of donations as well as theft, just that I view efficiency as a work in progress, and admin overhead as a practical necessity. Phone lines, advertising, research into problems and solutions, lobbying governments to do their job, reporting on progress, accounting, transporting food and materials etc etc. More volunteers like your good self would certainly drive down costs, as do free software and tax breaks, but i don't know of any way to have zero admin costs.

NGO's should certainly collaborate more to gain scale economies on purchasing as well as admin instead of each going it alone with relatively high fixed costs. Most problems have solutions, and if they're not where I want them to be yet I won't abandon them, but I concede that I'm in a better position to do so now since I adopted thrift, that wasn't always the case.

metrovelvet

democrates wrote:

The theatre group you donate to surely have overheads? I think we're agreed that waste is not acceptable, and there have been some wholesale abuses of donations as well as theft, just that I view efficiency as a work in progress, and admin overhead as a practical necessity. Phone lines, advertising, research into problems and solutions, lobbying governments to do their job, reporting on progress, accounting, transporting food and materials etc etc. More volunteers like your good self would certainly drive down costs, as do free software and tax breaks, but i don't know of any way to have zero admin costs..

Yes, but in most cases the admin/salary costs are somewhere around 90%. Futhermore, for example - charities working with the poor, homeless, or learning disabled, rarely if ever have these same consituencies on staff. That is one of my main objections to them. Additionally, much volunteer work, ie in hospitals or whereever, is another source of unpaid labour traditionally done by women [which is in direct conflict with ones pursuit of equality].

Also - what would be more productive is preventative measures to these ailments we have in our world rather than haphazard solutions. And quite frankly I get sick and tired of people thinking that throwing money at problems will be a solution to them.

There is a fabulous programme here called the big brother program where men volunteer to be " big brothers" to boys growing up without fathers. Its like a peer/mentoring programme for inner city boys. I would much rather do something like that than throw coins in a Trocaire box. If you do something like that - you have no idea of the positive effect you can have on someones life, by showing them some love, attention, guidance and delight. You could stop someone from growing up into an angry and bitter man. To me that is a miracle - to change the course of ones character, ones destiny even if in the most miniscule way. You dont need money to do that.

And Sleepy and anyone else - you can moan and complain about all the sufferring in the world, but if you dont do something, and force your personal to meet your political, than really you are directly contributing to that very same sufferring. We all know the reason bad things happen is because good people do nothing.

Incidentally democrates - my friend in VEnezuela has had to bribe an official to get his passport renewed and his cousing has been beaten and tortured in prison under the Chavez regime. These reforms you speak of are not so benevolent.

democrates

metrovelvet wrote:

Yes, but in most cases the admin/salary costs are somewhere around 90%. Futhermore, for example - charities working with the poor, homeless, or learning disabled, rarely if ever have these same consituencies on staff. That is one of my main objections to them. Additionally, much volunteer work, ie in hospitals or whereever, is another source of unpaid labour traditionally done by women [which is in direct conflict with ones pursuit of equality].

How can you object to unpaid volunteer labour, and salary costs simultaneously, am I misreading this?

Your point about employing target constituencies is well taken, rehab may be an exception, but there are limits to that too, you need skills and also there's not enough work in charities for all those who need to be helped.

If you have examples of only 10% of revenue getting to the target beneficiaries let me know, I'd like to write letters of complaint and cc to journalists and politicians.

But how can ordinary people here save those starving to death in Africa except through charitable donations? We can't walk away from our lives here and dump our own communities. If there's a better alternative I'll look at it, but as it stands I'll keep them in the mix.

metrovelvet wrote:

Also - what would be more productive is preventative measures to these ailments we have in our world rather than haphazard solutions. And quite frankly I get sick and tired of people thinking that throwing money at problems will be a solution to them.
There is a fabulous programme here called the big brother program where men volunteer to be " big brothers" to boys growing up without fathers. Its like a peer/mentoring programme for inner city boys. I would much rather do something like that than throw coins in a Trocaire box. If you do something like that - you have no idea of the positive effect you can have on someones life, by showing them some love, attention, guidance and delight. You could stop someone from growing up into an angry and bitter man. To me that is a miracle - to change the course of ones character, ones destiny even if in the most miniscule way. You dont need money to do that.

That's excellent, and have you noticed how few people are chatty and friendly these days, so many go about with scowls and don't make eye contact. That makes a horrible atmosphere, and may explain why so many believe "no-one cares". Again, ordinary people make the difference, a world of friendly people is a friendly world, and the reverse is true.

As for the long term solutions, I agree we need them, but it's a dilemma, save lives now or let them die and only build for the future. Since there's no grand dictatorship at work people are free to choose a charitable mix for themselves, and I'm happy with that freedom.

metrovelvet wrote:

Incidentally democrates - my friend in VEnezuela has had to bribe an official to get his passport renewed and his cousing has been beaten and tortured in prison under the Chavez regime. These reforms you speak of are not so benevolent.

In fairness corruption isn't part of the reform programme, that was already rife as it is in many other countries from Brazil to China.

Also Chavez was democratically elected, and it looks like he'll be returned again in December by another landslide majority. But I'm going a bit off-topic, it's been done to death on other threads.

Earthhorse

metrovelvet wrote:

Yes, but in most cases the admin/salary costs are somewhere around 90%.

Most of the big reputable charities have admin/salary costs nowhere near 90%.

metrovelvet

democrates wrote:

How can you object to unpaid volunteer labour, and salary costs simultaneously, am I misreading this?.

I have ambivalent view points which conflict with each other. To elaborate would go way way off topic.

democrates wrote:

If you have examples of only 10% of revenue getting to the target beneficiaries let me know, I'd like to write letters of complaint and cc to journalists and politicians.?.

I most definitely will. Though this is not big news so I doubt anyone will do anything about it.

democrates wrote:

But how can ordinary people here save those starving to death in Africa except through charitable donations? We can't walk away from our lives here and dump our own communities. If there's a better alternative I'll look at it, but as it stands I'll keep them in the mix..?.

Of course not. Moral choices are difficult. No one said it was easy. I for one like my trivial life, Im very attached to it. People have jobs to go to, families to raise, itunes to download. It's a question of priorities. And Im sorry you chose Africa as your example because that is one of my bugbears to be sure. Are we helping or just enabling widespread disfunction with all the money we throw at that continent?

democrates wrote:

That's excellent, and have you noticed how few people are chatty and friendly these days, so many go about with scowls and don't make eye contact. That makes a horrible atmosphere, and may explain why so many believe "no-one cares". Again, ordinary people make the difference, a world of friendly people is a friendly world, and the reverse is true...?.

Im so glad you brought this up. One of the most subtle ways you can make a difference is in your ordinary everyday life. What I notice all the time, and it DRIVES ME NUTS, is the way people treat each other as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. From how you talk to the check out person to picking up the opposite sex in a bar - we all use each other- we choose to remain invisible to each other. If we were more aware of this and changed this I do believe humanity would change.

Samos

I think that the lyrics from "Waitin' for a Superman" by The Flaming Lips is illuminating on this topic:

"...Is it overwhelming
To use a crane to crush a fly?
It's a good time for Superman
To lift the sun into the sky

...Tell everybody
Waitin' for Superman
That they should try to hold on
Best they can
He hasn't dropped them
Forgot them
Or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift"

Alot of us expect some amazing human being to come along and solve all of the world's problems, but that isn't going to happen, and the longer we wait idly by the worse things will get. We must realize that the power to make the our lives better lies in our own hands. We must choose to do what we believe is right and cease to follow the crowd.

Change is cumulative. Every action adds up. It takes one person to be a pioneer and cultivate a new way of living. Alone, his actions may seem insignificant, but if others follow his example momentum builds up and the overall change can be immeasurably large. It may be difficult to calculate the effects of our actions, but each of us must stop believing that we are insignificant, and realize that the choices we make do have widespread consequences.

Ordinary people have as much power, ability and influence as any "extraordinary" person. The only difference is that the later chooses to use these attributes.

democrates

Samos wrote:

Alot of us expect some amazing human being to come along and solve all of the world's problems, but that isn't going to happen, and the longer we wait idly by the worse things will get. We must realize that the power to make the our lives better lies in our own hands. We must choose to do what we believe is right and cease to follow the crowd.

In the perl (programming language) community there is a popular saying:
"If not me, then who? If not now, then when?"

Sgt. Sensible

SkepticOne wrote:

I think it is probably a good thing that most people don't get a chance to make a difference.

I think it is probably a good thing that most boards.ie users don't get a chance to make a difference.

Kell

About to get laughed at but here goes-

I would also like to live in a world as Sleepy describes however, while money (the presence and absence of it) exists, those ideals can never be achieved.

Impoverished people remain poor, because someone benefits from them being kept underfoot. Justice goes to the shítter, invariably because their is money pulling a string somewhere. The list is endless, but you can pretty much factor cash into all of it. Oh and weapons.

In an oversimplified world, who exactly do we have to protect ourselves against if the big players werent waging war globally in "self defense". Now say America/Britain pulled their armed forces from everywhere, the US quit spending on nuclear and militia programmes and drew their interests to being purely internal, who would the extremists have to fight? All that would be required is an internal "defense" force as opposed to an offense force. Take all the cash saved from spending on arms and wipe out third world debt and use the rest to wipe out poverty.

Yes, extraordinarily simplified, but the only workable way in my view to get to the "ideal state".

That doesnt require an individual. It requires the majority of the free thinking world thinking the same thing at the same time and demanding it. Every nation to down tools until their demands are met.

Taxi drivers do it, doctors do it, nurses do it but to mobilise entire nations? Anyone?

K-

Kell

Kell wrote:

to mobilise entire nations? Anyone?

I have been giving this some thought.

I cant figure out how to get millions of people to down tools on a particular date. First thought was the internet, but then, the people who would stand to gain the most from a single act of worldwide solidarity are the people who dont have access to the internet.

I am not minted and cant afford full page adverts in every major newspaper on the planet so any suggestions are welcome.

K-