Thuppal: There’s more than money in helping world’s poor

I have often been impressed by how much money well-to-do suburbanites are willing to pump into… I have often been impressed by how much money well-to-do suburbanites are willing to pump into aid organizations simply because they have a picture of a starving African child on their poster. Believing they are helping to change the world, they reach for their checkbooks and wallets in order to avoid any meaningful action for their cause du jour.

Though they mean well, one danger in donating to these organizations is that it creates a cap on how much one can help. Dollars are measurable. One can stop giving them, claiming that he has already given so much to so many causes.

For three years, I worked for such an organization and helped to open up hearts and wallets en route to funding hospitals oversees. However, after some time, I became unsatisfied with the results, knowing that I could only offer money and not much more.

In this way, I was secure and didn’t need to take any extra efforts to concern myself with the people I was helping. Having given them the set amount needed to buy books or satisfy their hunger, I moved on with the understanding that my work was done.

Let me state that any projects that are looking to improve the quality of life around the world should be commended. However, their success in funneling cash to these poorer nations has left us with a sense of detached indifference.

When we see statistics showing that so many millions of dollars have been used to combat AIDS and that so many schools have been built for disadvantaged children, we want to stop and be satisfied with our accomplishments.

And this includes stopping with respect to helping those in our own neighborhoods. When groups such as Amnesty International and Invisible Children post unnerving statistics about the slaughter of millions oversees, we are quick to reach out to these numbers instead of our neighbors.

In believing that we have done our part, we retire to our comfortable lives, believing that others can carry the torch from here on out.

As I stated, these groups are doing wonderful projects around the world that will surely bring opportunity and hope to people that had none before. But they are unwillingly spreading a shallow ideology, in which the amount that one should help others is confined to dollars.

But this does not have to be the case. If we can understand that changing lives has much more to do with human interaction, we may begin to reverse these notions of helping only through money. Just around the city, a few organizations have adopted this mentality.

At the local level, helping others can be much more meaningful through nonprofits such as Pittsburgh Cares. The group works to provide volunteer opportunities involving care for seniors and assisting with community events. Although one is not working directly to save the lives of others, the connections made and the gratitude received will have as much of a positive impact on the helper as on those being helped.

Even on an international level, money is not the only thing that can be used to change lives. Organizations such as the Pittsburgh-based Global Links have made their name by developing creative and low-cost methods of aid. For example, Global Links recycles surplus medical supplies and ships them to developing nations where they are in desperate need.

Initiatives such as these ask only for volunteers to give their time and energy as opposed to directly paying to help others. And in that, helping others is no longer calculated in dollars.

As the world’s wealthiest nation, the United States and its people probably feel a necessity to help those in developing nations. But hopefully, in the future, they will not forget that aid extends beyond the simple act of writing a check.

E-mail Hay at hat23@pitt.edu.