I see there is famine in Ethiopia again. I see this largely because the tv is awash with children in dire need of food, but also because I have started receiving the emails from Concern International, which I get whenever some new crisis pitches up (about once every six weeks or so.) Sometimes I feel there is a point to giving - apparently £50 can buy a whole load of Plumpynut (yes it really is called that - hi-energy nosh for malnourished people). Clearly money well spent (unlike on the Myanmar crisis, where none of the aid was allowed in.) This makes me feel Extremely Guilty about even contemplating the purchase of, for instance, £30 worth of skincare, let alone frittering another £20 on re-rooting Sindy dolls.
However, I do not particularly favour Concern International, and this is why. In the first place, there is the issue of their paying £1000 a day for "consultancy" services. Nobody is worth that much, and I suspect that anybody who earns that much can afford to donate their time for nothing. It also smacks of imposing the Will of the Developed, which always makes me antsy. Having worked with people myself, I am aware that many of them need stuff imposed for their own or their community's good, but it still makes me nervous.
Secondly, Concern do not provide you with the biggest bang for your charitable buck. My faves are Unicef, because they send Happy Stories and pictures of Saved Children Smiling. I know this is shallow but frankly it is also what you want. Concern just carries on finding more and more things wrong with the world and it just makes me DESPERATE. I feel I should sell my house and go and live in a poor place and catch something nasty - which I don't plan on doing, so that the only net result is I feel guilty and resentful.
Resentment, I find, does not encourage generosity. It just means you sit about thinking THERE IS NOTHING TO BE DONE IT IS ALL HOPELESS.
When we come to my great question about charitable giving - how much is enough? A fixed amount? A percentage of your income? Take home or net? Enough to feed your proportion of the LDC population? More, because I am still working and there won't be much to be got from me when I'm living off Mr Brown's 2p a year pension (in a boat due to global warming. Or an upturned umbrella if I can't afford a boat.) ? Apart from more than we are currently sending, how much is enough? Is it measured by what you can afford, or what is needed, or what makes a difference?
Every time I see a Judge on television I have other thoughts about charity; namely that I would happily stump up a few quid a month to sponsor sharp but poor women with a bit of nous and a sense of justice (although The Word is, that this lack of women QCs is due to the age of the Bench, and the number of women employed as barristers 40 years ago. So maybe I should be agitating for a Compulsory Retirement Age for the old codger QCs.)
I am genuinely curious about whether anybody has any answers. Just enough to assuage my guilt would be fine, if only somebody would tell me how much that is and where it should go.
I look forward to hearing from you.
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