h a l f b a k e r yBunned. James Bunned.
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, best, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
[Disclaimer: This idea is bound to upset some people; but please remember it is just a book. I'm not suggesting it be compulsory reading or forced on anyone.]
The important of helping the poor is something that meets broad agreement from people in all walks of life, agreeing as it does with both
innate concern for our neighbours and religious teaching. [aside: thanks DrBob] Actually doing this is not as easy as it seems. Even in the case of the classical roadside beggar, there are complex considerations related to misuse of donations, sustaining homelessness etc. In some places, charities are active and able to help the poor; however they only reach a fraction of the poor and the aid they give through your donation is not guaranteed to be as effective as you actually doing your own helping of the poor.
You can read the Bible and gain a great understanding of the importance of helping the poor, and even some hints about what kind of help the poor might need. However, these are far too vague for direct implementation within the modern world.
The Helping the Poor Manual is the answer to this. Whilst it does not contradict key religious beliefs, it does not discuss them overtly. It is based upon being as unambiguous as the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle.
Section one outlines finding the poor. It gives you a list of common places, situations and conditions in which poor and needy people may be found. It describes methods by which you might gain access to data about poverty, or even people or bodies where you can gain information about specific cases in need of help.
Section two is focused upon evaluating the poor. As effective help is based upon effective understanding; this equates to understanding the poor. Having found poor and needy people in section one; this section is a simple step-by-step guide to figuring out what they lack and why they lack it. Tick-boxes and decision matrices replace subjective judgement (manual override at your own risk).
Section three now guides you through transferring your evaluation of the poor and needy that you identified previously into a plan of action. It gives details of ways in which you can bring about effective sustainable aid in the identified sectors of need or strategies to redress the (itemised, cross-referenced) causes of poverty that are known to work. For example, where the poor just can't stretch their income quite enough, it might instruct you to establish a small co-operative to allow a group of poor persons to buy in bulk and save per person.
Section four is about evaluation of the effectiveness of the help provided. It feeds back into section two as through the response to help you build further understanding. More decision matrices and the like. Tick-boxes and forms to evaluate whether things are working.
Section five is a set of useful forms and resources; these include templates for letters of recommendation, application forms for key bits of paper, cut-out-and-keep essential phone-number lists, and details of charities etc. which are able to help (per country and per city).
[link]
|
| |
//Section one outlines finding the poor//
Couldn't you just set poor-traps? |
|
| |
[coprocephalous] .. would that not be termed a 'poverty trap'? |
|
| |
//People of faith, and many without faith, agree that helping those who are poor needs to be a priority.//
Not so sure that we do. People, including myself, may state that as an objective but not too many of us actually do much about it. We always have more important things to do just at the moment, it seems.
Also, your distinction between the alleged attitudes of those with 'faith' and those without is somewhat offensive. You might want to re-phrase that sentence to something like "many people agree that helping those who are poor needs to be a priority". People's religious beliefs or lack of them, really don't need to be brought into the issue and you are just putting up a red flag for a flame war by doing so. |
|
| |
[DrBob] - thanks- have edited. Original intention was not to show a distinction; but to express how widespread the viewpoint was - in that it transcends both religions and religion. |
|
| |
Seriously, isn't finding, evaluating, helping and re-evaluating poor people what these charities are all about? How do you know you're not helping the same poor person as the last twenty people you passed on the street, while armies of poor people go un attended elsewhere in the city? How do you train laypeople to handle the mentally ill or drug addicted? If one sets up a co-op, doesn't one become the charitable organization you sought to replace? |
|
| |
A substantial amount of taxes go to the poor. They get housing, money to live on, education, medical care etc. And we keep voting for politicians that implement those policies. Saying we don't do anything for the poor is a bit erroneous. |
|
| |
//Seriously, isn't finding, evaluating, helping and re-evaluating poor people what these charities are all about?// Yes, it is, and they do a really good job. However, personally I don't feel comfortable just sitting back and outsourcing - people with an ignorance of what's happening 'on the ground' and a disconnection from the poor and needy are the root cause of many of the problems in the first place. |
|
| |
//taxes...don't do anything for the poor...// I did not say we don't do anything for the poor. I just proposed a half-baked idea for a step-by-step guide to DIY helping the poor. Further, not everyone lives in a country so affluent and evidently caring as it seems you do [Bad Jim] - many of us live in places where the government is more interested in self-enrichment and charities are both legally handicapped and underfunded. |
|
| |
I guess this is a good idea, but it seems it should be more of a pamphlet about finding effective organizations so thet you can donate your time and money effectively thru them. I am certainly no authority on the subject but I can't see how individual efforts could be as effective as good group efforts. Maybe it could outline the methods of effective organizations to help people to create new organizations in areas that don't have effective ones. Or maybe ways of creating new branch offices. |
|
| |
I envision this being used by two kinds of people: missionaries and muggers. Missionaries would use it to choose which scriptures each person would most relate with, thus finding converts much more easily. Muggers would use it to more easily identify which potential marks would be the most profitable. I can't say I condone either. |
|
| |
I think this is a good idea. |
|
| |
It may be true that we already do a lot for the
poor, but we provide much more effective help to
people who aren't poor. We spend an enormous
amount of money on roads, for example. Roads
help people sell stuff, and the poor don't benefit
as much from roads as they might, because they
don't sell stuff. Granted that road users pay taxes
to support the roads, but they also benefit from
everybody else's taxes that go toward roads. |
|
| |
Also, we provide air-traffic controllers, the SEC,
the Fed, and the FBI -- none of which benefit
poor people nearly as much as they benefit
nonpoor people. The list goes on and on; I won't
bore you with it. |
|
| |
Sure, we give visibly to the poor, but we give a lot
more, a lot less visibly, to the nonpoor. |
|
| |
Uh... Tinted Timepiece... I'm not quite sure how to say this without sounding.... oh, what's the word....OBVIOUS, but without roads and aircraft, none of the goods that are currently available to the poor would reach them, let alone anything that people might want to donate to them. Also, without roads, the poor would be incurably unemployed with no way to get to work, because there'd be no mass transit. Without roads the only way to get around would be via horse or high-quality mountain bike, neither of which are affordable to the poor. So stop paying for roads and see how well you've benefitted them. |
|
| |
Please, give your next annotation a little more thought. |
|
| |
[MrQED] //good group efforts// - I strongly suspect although you are right in most cases, there are some cases in which more personal one-to-one involvement will bring about better results, especially where it allows the forming of the bonds of friendship and community that are hard to create between an large national or international charity and an individual person in need. Much like schools do well to teach most people some things, but mentors and tutors do have a valuable role to play in specific cases, and can often achieve striking improvement in individual cases. |
|
| |
[21 Quest] //missionaries and muggers// - while we're at it, let's ban shops. They will only be used by thieves. Abolish ATM machines as they help muggers pick their targets. I'd also like to get rid of the police force, as having a police force leads to corrupt police officers. Respectfully, I feel your rebuttal of my idea is decidedly weak. |
|
| |
[colorclocks] This idea is not about helping the poor. It is about creating a book which gives step-by-step instructions for those who wish to help the poor themselves. Poor and needy helping for dummies, perhaps. Whilst I do share your sentiments about an imbalance of spending, I fear they do not impact this idea. |
|
| |
I agree with Vince there, that this idea is certainly not impacted by spending habits. Vince, I really just feel that it's best to let the poor who need help seek it out on their own. Perhaps it would be a better idea to put up flyers with info that the needy can use, in areas that they frequent. The reason is that, until a person is ready to seek help on their own, your efforts to help them are generally wasted. Anyway, that is what missionaries do. |
|
| |
//who need help seek it out on their own.// You could argue the same for children - don't put them through school and try to give them an education - wait until they realise how important it is so much they go and get one on their own. Indeed, there are public libraries and teach-yourself books on most topics. What I mean by that is that there must always be a mixture of the freedom to self-improve as well as someone there offering a helping hand. |
|
| |
Vince, I think from the way you talk of helping the poor that you've probably seen many of them in your life, but interacted with very few. Approach a bedraggled-looking person in this town who you think is homeless and you'll quickly find out that that's just how folks dress around here. Approach a person who is homeless and offer them anything other than money or food and they'll get angry with you and you might get stabbed for insulting whatever pride they still have. Many, feeling ashamed of themselves for having fallen so low, will refuse any help at all, even money and food handouts, because they feel they have a personal responsibility to stand on their own two feet. Again, pride is a huge issue. |
|
| |
Many of the homeless are homeless because of a powerful drug addiction, and they won't accept any help that's offered. They will defend their addiction and assault you verbally, emotionally, and sometimes physically. Other times, they'll string you along until they've gotten something out of you, then laugh at you and walk away, leaving you feeling very naive and foolish. I speak from personal experience. |
|
| |
The homeless are best left alone, and the best way to help them is to provide a place they can go when they're ready to be helped, and post flyers around town that they can read at their own pace without feeling like somebody's shoving it down their throats. |
|
| |
Blahblahblah, blahblahblah, blahblahblah |
|
| |
[21 Quest], thank you for your most recent annotation - to me it really underlines the need for this book. As you state, it's not easy. First impressions and gut reactions are often going to be wrong. True, the concept of going and helping poor people is very simple... but as you mention, in some cases, actually doing it can be so hard that it may be so hard that it is effectively impossible. |
|
| |
However, I am certain that there are people who do know how to help. People who have years of experience, or just an inspired approach. By writing down how these people work, and how they are able to actually achieve results, in a 'step-by-step' fashion, it is just possible that their experience and techniques might start doing good in places they themselves cannot reach. |
|
| |
//Tick-boxes and decision matrices replace subjective judgement // |
|
| |
This is a quote from you post that really bothers me, Vince. It just sounds too bureaucratic. If you really want to help people, that's not the way to do it. |
|
| |
Section six should be about not getting yourself ripped off while trying to help the poor. [+] |
|
| |
//replace subjective judgement //
[21 Quest]... I thought that you would have understood the reason for this. As you yourself allude to, what your gut instinct tells you is probably a poor approach in these situations. Hence, the value in having a system through which a more objective decision might be reached. |
|
| |