What is Charity? Are you a bad person if you are not doing charity?? Are you responsible for the deaths of thousands of people because of the everyday consumer products that you buy? Also, are there people around you that inspire you in any way and one day( you hope) you will be the better person for the experience and time that you have spent with them?
I was watching a documentary called ‘Blood in the Mobile’ ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-in-the-Mobile-DVD/dp/B005EQKJHO, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/ ). It is about the mining of coal tan in D.R.C. The tone of the documentary ( and indeed the content ) was very serious. The fact that the people in the Walikele and Busie mining regions are risking their lives everyday to get the minerals out of the earth cannot be disputed and also the fact that they are stuck between the rock and the hard place i.e. work for a living and be constantly threatened by the local warlords. But by the end of the documentary I was left feeling a bit aggrieved cause the documentary eneded by blaming me ( yes me personally and all the people who have eve bought a mobile phone! ) for all that’s wrong in D.R.C.! Now at the best of times hurting someone is not one of the possible options that I give any consideration, but to be blamed for killing people just because i like my mobile phone was a bit over the top and I was almost furious at how the person making the documentary ended up alienating me ( the viewer ) instead of garnering empathy! Now don’t get me wrong her, I am not for one instance supporting the killing anyone, not in Congo, not anywhere around the globe. Infact in one of my previous blogs ( http://computersight.com/operating-systems/windows/co-driver ) I had written about how the thought of actually hurting someone brings about such a drastic personality change in me. But is the solution to this crisis putting and end to use of mobile phones? or for that matter blaming people for whats happening in Congo?? On similar lines. I hate when the environmental groups blame people for travelling by planes and show pictures of ( sad ) polar bears on broken icebergs etc. whats the solution? Not using planes for travel any more?? I for one have always believed that one should try hard to be not a part of the problem but a part of the solution! I think its never the question that is interesting its the part where you try to find the answer that is interesting. ( the phrase ‘interesting question’ normally means that answer to this question is / will be interesting )
So is charity the solution to this or similar crisis ?? I think my answer on that issue is a firm no!! I believe in the saying ‘if you give a man a fish he does not go hungry on that day, but if you teach him how to fish he doenst go hungry forever!! I think if charity was the answer then the amount of money that has been chucked at African continent ( actually any part of the world ) should have started showing some sign of change. Infact the thing that really gets on my nerves is the charity dinners of events for charity where the well to do ( I think I can include myself in that lot as I don’t have to constantly worry about my food, clothing or shelter ) come to have a good time and go away with the feeling of ‘helping’ the poor 
. On the same note I am not sure how I feel about the multinational charity corporations but I will leave that as a topic for another blog.
I have recently met a few people in Belfast who are volunteering their time at various events and let me quickly add that these are not music festivals etc. I don’t know these people that well ( if you are reading this you know who you are 
). They have already made their mark on my conscience. They have really for the first time made me question how I use my free time and made me actually think about ‘charity’. They have made me question the importance of a Saturday morning ‘I am not doing anything today’ FB update vs I spent two hours this morning working for xyz cause. My heart is still not in the right place, and for not I still cant bring myself to donate time to any of the causes. Any action that I take now in the spur of the moment will be artifical cause I am not doing it because I have convinced myself that I am up for it, but because its socially accepted as a nice thing to do. I hope the good sied of me will eventually trump the lazy one ( dont we all always hope for that?? ) and I will start devoting some of my time to causes where I think I can genuinely make a diffence. Fingers crossed!
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