When I leave my walled, barbed-wired, gated and guarded community and drive in my locked car with the windows closed into the city, I see slums, people sleeping on the sidewalk, beggars everywhere.
The beggars are varied. There are whole communities of different kinds of beggars. There are filthy women with matted hair and filthier babies. There are people with missing or deformed limbs. The lepers. The drug addicts. The trans community. And there is a group of little boys, around 6-14 years old, who live together in a field and beg at an intersection on Brigade Road. They are all addicted to glue sniffing. They sit on blankets on the sidewalk, crying and begging. They drag themselves through traffic at stop lights, hoping for some money. They knock and scratch insistently and pitifully on windows.
Then there are the thousands of desperate registered charities in this city alone. Schools for the very poor, for the disabled, for the deaf. Hospitals for the poor. Homes for the destitute. Societies for the blind.
No one person can fix it all. No one organisation can fix it all. But one person can do one thing. So pick one thing and do it. If choosing is too hard, then make a list of all the things that you wish you could fix and have something to offer (money, time, compassion, a skill...). Then draw one from a hat. Then commit to it. Now you're making a difference that matters.
The beggars are varied. There are whole communities of different kinds of beggars. There are filthy women with matted hair and filthier babies. There are people with missing or deformed limbs. The lepers. The drug addicts. The trans community. And there is a group of little boys, around 6-14 years old, who live together in a field and beg at an intersection on Brigade Road. They are all addicted to glue sniffing. They sit on blankets on the sidewalk, crying and begging. They drag themselves through traffic at stop lights, hoping for some money. They knock and scratch insistently and pitifully on windows.
Then there are the thousands of desperate registered charities in this city alone. Schools for the very poor, for the disabled, for the deaf. Hospitals for the poor. Homes for the destitute. Societies for the blind.
No one person can fix it all. No one organisation can fix it all. But one person can do one thing. So pick one thing and do it. If choosing is too hard, then make a list of all the things that you wish you could fix and have something to offer (money, time, compassion, a skill...). Then draw one from a hat. Then commit to it. Now you're making a difference that matters.
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