Is there a need to offer direct service (one-on-one) to the poor in the world?
This is the question posed to us and my answer is a very strong "Yes".
Reason #1 - out of sight out of mind syndrome.
If you haven't seen what you are trying to help, or writing off as a tax cut, then you are not really thinking about it. How much more powerful is it when something is experienced instead of donating. Even TV commercials for sponsoring the worlds starving children can not do justice to seeing, and touching and smelling what the commercial is actually talking about. I know that there is the the argument that it would cost less to just send the money down and create more jobs to have the workers there do the service projects, but then the experience is taken out of this part of life. Hiring locals is a good concept. On the mission trips I have been a part of we have often hired locals to help with the project and do specialized tasks as well as leaving money behind to continue the process. A plane ticket is expensive, but it always comes back to the needing of the experience. Being a part of something changes people, commercials don't - they have de-sensatized us.
Reason #2 - It will mean more to the poor
Seeing your face and interacting with you will mean more to someone who needs your help than receiving something in the mail with your name on it. It will have such a great impact on their lives to meet someone who cares - the letter in the mail doesn't due caring justice. It gives you an opportunity to build a relationship, to help more than just with money, but with time, advice and love. Your sphere of influence will be much larger if you go.
Reason #3 - Ignorance is not bliss - (related to #1)
I lived in small town pennsylvania where there were people who had never even left their county. They tend to be referred to as Hicks. They only know their lives and their neighbors and they only know one way of life. By traveling to other places - (including a new county where they might be a soup kitchen) - you learn about other cultures and ways of life. It greatly diversifies your life and enriches it. Americans in general have the reputation for being narrow minded in this area - we live as Americans, wherever we go. This is not what I would call a good reputation. Learning new things and new ways brings people closer together and will enrich globalization....which does not translate into everyone will become westernized. As we learn from our differences and enjoy them, it should result in less war and hostility and even help us come up with alternatives to bad lifestyles. We need to help each other, we can't do that from separate continents by checks in the mail.
Reason #4 - Why not you?
I saw one of the other posts that talked about the bystander effect - assuming that someone else will do what needs to be done. But, then it never gets done because we all think someone else will do it. But why not you? Why someone else? If we all get directly involved, if we all think the opposite, I need to do it cause no one else will, then maybe something would get done. The world needs to be changed, but to do that it needs people willing to participate. So why not you?
All of these reasons tend to find their way back to the world of experience. Experience for the giver the receiver. A concept of contact an relationships. These are basic human necessities, money is not - it is a necessity but other things are actually more important, even to poor people. This isn't to say that you need to go out on every mission you can or that you need to become a missionary, or even that these organizations don't need those lovely tax-deductable checks. But even just in the community, getting out and being involved in helping the poor, making friends and relationships - that is what makes a difference. You don't have to fly across the world to be involved directly - but you do have to be involved directly to make the difference the world needs.
