First let me preface with this: If you are just a tightwad looking for an excuse not to help people in need, this article is not for you. But if you are a compassionate person with a heart breaking for the people around the world struggling and suffering and starving, this article is for you – especially if you are not a member of that country or even continent.
Compassion International just came to my church today and drew me into that horrible video of starving people trying to wrench people out of compassion and even white guilt into opening up their wallets. Probably every person who does give, is one of the most compassionate people in the church. In fact, it it possible that they themselves have suffered from hunger – which creates an interesting dilemma and further expounds upon my following points.
Before we get started, let’s clear up a couple questions: Is it good to help people? Yes! Is it good to give food to the starving! Of course! Is it good to lessen human suffering if possible? Absolutely!
Should you feel guilty about not giving to these funds? Not necessarily. If you are just a tightwad who turns a blind eye to the poor and the beggars even in your own cities, then you have another problem and for that reason you should feel guilty for being an uncompassionate tightwad. But like I said before, if that’s you then this article is not speaking to you. This article is speaking to the good people who have a heart and compassion for the poor, broken, starving, homeless, and destitute; and just generally good people.
Ok, so there are a number of reasons you should not give to these funds. First let’s address whether groups like Compassion International are a scam. After doing some research, I do not believe that Compassionate International is a scam. For example, look at this article: Major Christian Charity Is Closing India Operations Amid a Crackdown – clearly they give to the people; India kicked them out because the new government wants to destroy any “forced conversions” which is illegal there. How could there be a forced conversion if they didn’t even support the children? So it is clear they do, at least in many cases or in some countries, get the help to the children.
However, I do know that many groups are scams (even unintentionally), and that often the billions in aid given to Africa and other third world countries never reach the individuals. Sometimes groups like Unicef will simply drop rations into the area on a parachute pallet from a plane or helicopter and fly away (for good reason in some areas where they fear being shot down) – but these rations delivered in this manner are usually scooped up not by the needy but by the government and bands of thieves who will steal it and keep it for themselves or sell at an exorbitant profit.
For that reason alone, if you do give, you need to be extremely discerning as to which organization you do support. Compassion International is probably a really good one – but, for the reason I will get into in a minute, I will explain why it is not really helping even if the child you sponsor does get the aid you provide.
The first problem with this type of guilt-trip drawing in gullible people and bashing them with white guilt like how all white people are all prosperous and how only the poor little black African children are the only starving people in the world.
This isn’t Africa. This is America – Detroit.
Ignorant, brainwashed Americans clueless about reality outside their picket fence middle and upper class neighborhoods, who never saw the poverty, ghettos, and utter starvation and destitution right here in America. They turn their blind eye to the beggars on the side of the road, never visit the America orphanages – which some are good but others are horrible – and are never exposed to the horrors, starvation, homelessness, and destitute poverty right here in America.
The proponents of these foreign programs suggest that we have it so great here in the first world and that we’re the only prosperous people in the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, every country in the world has ghettos, and America, Brazil, Eastern Europe and Russia, China, India, and many other places in Asia, South America, North America, and even Western Europe all have poor, destitute, hopeless, starving people who haven’t had a meal for a week.
Hungry American Woman Looking For Food In The Dumpster
Answer this. What is worse? To live in the middle of nowhere where everyone is starving, and be starving yourself, where you are surrounded by nothing but mud huts, dirt, and nothing else?
Or the person starving to death who hasn’t eaten in a week, has no hope, and is surrounded by wealthy people, fancy buildings and cars, technology, industry, and so much opportunity – none of which is available to them, and no one willing to even give them a bite to eat? Where they can be given a dollar from a stranger but it isn’t enough money to even get a single meal?
Where they have to jump into filthy and disease-ridden garbage cans to get their next meal, hoping they don’t get arrested and imprisoned for their desperation? Where they have to sleep in the bitter cold on hard cement, unable to get a good night’s sleep for years because every night they are constantly harassed by individuals and police who make them move around every couple hours? Where they face a constant threat of being beaten up, injured, stabbed, shot, and worse? All right here in America? The homeless of America face all of this every day. And there are actually millions of them. Millions, right here in America.
Hungry American Girl
ABC did as story about how 1 in 5 American children in America are suffering from starvation. Today, it is almost certainly worse.
I will tell you for certain. The people in the third world countries, in many ways, have it better off. Not the ones who are literally dying of malaria and whom you can see their actual skeleton – but those are the worst of the worst and extremely rare. Most of the poor in Africa have the same opportunities for food as anywhere else; and in fact, the starving in Africa have more hope of getting help than the hopeless and starving right here in America. No one is getting rock stars to give food to the starving homeless in America, but these rock stars are willing to do fundraisers that send millions of dollars to the poor from other countries instead, while totally ignoring the millions who are starving, dying, disease-ridden, living in horrible poverty and danger, addicted to drugs, no family, no friends, no hope. No ability to get a job, no one to help them, no way to get their next meal, no place to call home. It is an utter tragedy.
Romanian Orphans
The same tragedy occurs in many other first-world countries as well, especially the more poor countries in Eastern Europe. Look at the Europeans in Romania, for example. Yes there are some Middle Easterns in Romania, but these are Muslim migrants. Most Romanians are Europeans – white Europeans, because the Romanian ethnicity is a white ethnicity. Due to communism, there are millions of orphans with no hope, no help, and constant danger and threat of being sold into human slavery and sex slavery. There is some of the worst poverty there, with horrific conditions from your nightmares like extended bots of starvation, groups of homeless starving children with nothing, eating rats for food. Horrible. Yet these children are ignored because they are white and Europe is supposed to be some prosperous continent “way better” than the starving people in Africa. This is nothing but a white-guilt delusion.
The first time that I discovered that in Africa there were entire cities, full of cars, skyscrapers, roads, commerce, businesses, and everything just like in America, I was shocked. Prior to discovering this, my only exposure to Africa was the skeleton children in the mud in front of grass huts in the middle of the desert from the “help the starving Africans” commercials. This is highly deceptive. Africa does have a full infrastructure, cities, roads, businesses, and commerce just like the rest of the world.
This a city in Africa! They don’t show you that on their guilt-trip charity starving videos!
Sure, there are many places that are in the middle of nowhere or the middle of the desert that have problems due to that lack of infrastructure; but this is the exception, not the rule. Much – even most – of Africa that is habitable is developed. There are also places in the middle of nowhere in the USA, South America, Eastern Europe, China, and many other places considered “first world” where there are suffering, starving people. But these people are ignored because of the continent the live on.
Countries need to focus on their own people first rather than sending all of their aid out of the country to foreign countries while ignoring their own people. If America gave all the aid they give to other countries to the equally destitute homeless, starving, disabled (such as veterans with no legs), drug-addicted, and homeless people in their own countries, we could solve most of the suffering problem within our own borders. But no, all these people are ignored because the people who are doing well are deluded and blind themselves into thinking that poverty only exists in Africa and India. Send them to most any inner city, and if they survive and return alive, they may have a completely different perspective. Or send them to the poverty stricken in the hills hundreds of miles from civilization, here in America, they might change their tune. But they won’t, and they’ll just send all their help out of the country and still drive past the homeless people on the street and ignore them.
Doesn’t your heart break for this homeless person? But this is America, everyone is rich here, right? Ignore this guy and send to the poor and not homeless in Africa instead. Right?He’s white, and lives in America, so he doesn’t need help, right?
However, there is a far greater problem that all of this. While it is important to help our own countries and our own people that are equally suffering first, certainly; there is a much greater issue with foreign aid, especially to Africa, Asia, and other countries given a “third-world” status. Of course, the first is that most aid doesn’t even get there, with the exception of maybe Compassion International – but the greater problem is that it is just a temporary band-aid on a much greater problem.
I do think that we should help other countries. I don’t think we should only help our own suffering people; although, our own people within our own countries should be our first priority. Other countries need help, but just mindlessly sending them food without any practical plan, even if it gets to them, only makes the issue far, far worse.
Let’s discuss why giving the starving in third world countries food is doing more harm than good. Let’s just use Africa as the example, but the same applies to Haiti, India, and other dictatorships and oppressive countries where the government oppresses their people.
The first problem, like I mentioned, is that it is only a band-aid, even if they do get it. In fact, this band aid actually creates far more suffering.
Suppose in the guilt-trip videos they ended with a disclaimer, “giving today can change this child’s life. However, it will cause 10x, 100x, even a thousand times more suffering as a result”. Would you give then? Probably not.
If you realized the damage you are doing, by helping, as tragic as it sounds, you might begin brainstorming a better solution. We have been giving to Africa for decades, and yet, the problem has only multiplied. Today, there are probably hundreds of millions more people needing help in Africa than when the first time someone gave foreign aid. This is no coincidence. In fact it is a direct consequence!
2017 United Nations graph showing population explosion in Africa. America and Europe can’t support this population growth; the so-called “third-world” needs to be taught to help themselves.
By giving foreign aid to corrupt, third-world countries, you create several problems.
First let’s talk about the reason why the problem exists. Is it because African children are stupid and helpless? While there have been studies showing that Africans have on average a lower IQ, this is NOT the reason why there are starving people in Africa. Africans still have enough intelligence to help themselves. We do know that Africans are by nature more violent; and while that is certainly a culprit, it is NOT the cause of why there are millions of starving Africans.
So, why are there millions of starving Africans? It is largely a combination of corrupt governments combined with foreign aid, and a cycle of dependence that multiplies the problem.
By giving foreign aid, you are allowing corrupt governments to continue oppressing their people and hoarding wealth; and not implementing the mandatory requirements, because when things get too bad and people are dying, “the Americans will help”. It creates a cycle of dependence. By creating dependence, both individually and as a whole, it makes the people lose their desire to actually improve their own lives – a necessary and MANDATORY thing needed. By giving them a fish instead of teaching them to fish (so to speak), all you do is cause them to have no need to learn how to fish, because the fish are just showing up. But if they are starving to death, sooner or later someone is going to say “hey, no help is coming, it’s time we learn how to fish and grow plants to eat!” And at that point, no more aid is even needed, because out of necessity, they learned to help themselves.
By giving foreign aid, you take away that necessity.
Moreover, you do the same on a government level. By simply giving aid, if the government doesn’t just steal it from the people like usually happens in Africa, then it causes the same cycle of dependence. The people are doing ok despite the government doing nothing to help and oppressing them, because foreigners give them the food. Then the government sees no need to change their ways and actually help their people, so they also become dependent on foreign aid. As the people multiply, more and more foreign aid is needed, because they government was never compelled to help their own people. So they continue to do nothing, and let the Americans help instead of helping their own people.
Africa’s people know the government is a primary reason for African problems. But most of Africa is not the mud huts you see on the commercials; they are countries and cities just like ours.
So, by giving foreign aid, you are requiring an indefinitely ever-multiplying need for aid, and dissuading their own governments from helping.
Additionally, when you indiscriminately just send over food, it is a nice thing to help someone starving to have food, but now they will have 5 to 10 children who are now in the same need. This sounds harsh, but be objective. If one helpless person died from starvation, and does not give birth to 10 more helpless children, which in turn due to foreign aid are able to have 100 more children, and 1000 in the next generation, then by continuing to indiscriminately just send over food and help without requirement means that you just multiplied the one starving person into 1,000 starving people. You made the problem a thousand times worse. Your heart was in the right place, but your actions were 1,000 times worse than doing nothing at all. We know that this is true because it is exactly what has happened in the last 50 years.
Lastly, many programs also try to give education. They teach them math, reading, etc. It sounds good on paper, but it is wrong. Very wrong. These people in the middle of nowhere without access to internet, books, or libraries, do not need to learn to read as the first thing. It can be useful later, but it is the wrong thing to teach them first.
These children are so poor that they don’t have food to eat. What is a book going to help their immediate needs? They can’t eat a book. Here is what they should be taught first instead: the fundamentals of agriculture, fishing, raising animals, shepherding, farming and animal husbandry. After they are shown how to feed themselves without any help from the outside, if they still want to learn to read and write and do math, then great, they should, it can be helpful. But if they can’t even feed themselves, what needs to happen is to get them OUT of the cycle of dependence, by teaching them self-sufficiency and sustainable practices. Later, they can be taught about reading, writing, self-sustaining electricity such as solar and wind power, mining, industry, business, etc. At that point they can transform their own countries into a first-world country.
Keep in mind I said THEY can turn THEIR own countries into a first-world country. We don’t have to do it for them. They are not helpless invalids. If they were, euthanasia by inaction might be in order, as it would be cruel to allow millions of armless legless mute deaf blind paraplegic invalids to continue to procreate more and more complete invalids unable to care for themselves. Africans (and people in other third-world countries) are NOT invalids. They are fully capable of helping themselves! Under the right conditions. They need a nudge, but they do NOT need to become dependents on foreign aid as happens when you send them such without a clear and direct plan for self-sufficiency – with a clear timeline.
They need to learn self-sufficiency and agriculture, so they can help and feed themselves.
But trying to give them first-world practices in a third-world, undeveloped location in the middle of nowhere, does not help them; it wastes their time and extends the need for foreign aid, because they continue to be dependent and not self-sufficient.
So by teaching them how to fish, so to speak, by teaching them how to be self-sufficient, this ends the cycle of dependency and the unending need for foreign aid.
Lastly, many times this isn’t possible right away due to evil, corrupt, and oppressive governments. In the case that a government is so incompetent that they let their people starve to death while relying on foreign aid to feed some of their people, this level of leadership incompetence causing mass starvation and death is in fact a crime to humanity. These evil leaders should be quickly overthrown and replaced with members of the community who have been carefully selected as compassionate and good people and trained in the ways of leadership and governance of a developed nation.
These evil African mafias go around with AK-47s murdering and oppressing their own people, stealing, pillaging, and robbing their own people blind. They are effectively terrorists. But, unlike the muslim terrorists, the African warlords and dictators in the middle of the desert are third-world terrorists with limited infrastructure and hardly a military force. A few jets carpet bombing and a couple navy seal teams trained in guerilla warfare will quickly decimate their evil forces. We shouldn’t be meddling in the middle east, but we should be fixing the obvious government problems in Africa.
These monsters recruit children to be part of their dictatorship chaos. They need to be shut down.
After taking care of any corrupt government issues and destroying the evil dictator terrorists, then the African people who are willing to help themselves can be taught how to help themselves. And if they are not willing, yet able to help themselves, then no help or aid should be given to those people. It is no charity to help a person unwilling to help themselves, it only steals from the people who really need it. Let them starve until they have enough motivation to break their dependence and are willing to learn how to help themselves. But most, I believe, most people will be willing to learn and do anything to help themselves. By helping them and teaching them to be self-sufficient, we can end the vicious cycle of eternal dependency on ever-increasing foreign aid and perpetuating the problem of suffering in Africa – and the same principles can be applied to other poverty-stricken nations.
But first we need to help our own people. The same is true with our own people – don’t just throw money and food at them. Teach them to be self sufficient, to farm, to fish, to shepherd, to raise animals, and agriculture. Teach them to build reliable residences, remove wasteful spending, disallow monopolies like walmart from killing small business in small towns, and many other things we can do to help our own people. However, I think we have enough resources to do both (help our own people and also help other countries, the right way) – but we cannot forget our own people or fall under any delusions that the people in Africa are the only truly suffering or starving, which is totally false.
So should you give? What you should do is participate in helping people to help themselves. Unfortunately, there aren’t any programs to do that. If I get wealthy I will start one. If you are able you should start one. Don’t just give them a fish, or you will have to continue giving them and their children and grandchildren and descendants forever all fish. Teach them to fish, so to speak, and then when they are able to help themselves, the billions in aid can be given to the people in our own countries who need it just as badly. And then, after you have a solid plan in place (and only then), you can then give them a “fish” to help their immediate needs, but only once they are on course to helping themselves so that they do not simply become dependent and multiply the problem.
