Give beggars?
"Jap," the little girl said Rosen sold when they treated the bundle to my friend.
We were in Bangkok and I saw my Australian friend sympathy with a little Thai girl selling flowers take drunk backpackers on Khao San Road in Thailand. She bought all the flowers, feel good about themselves and confident that she had a little girl held up late in the night, they get home to send rest tomorrow for school.
"Oh, what the hell!" I say she later heard about 30 minutes. I looked up and there across the street, was the little flower girl, sell a new batch of flowers. She avoided us this time.
My Australian friend was clearly discouraged. She felt as if she had done something good, only to realize a cruel reality of Thailand not walk children home until their parents say so. After, I knew many years in Thailand, this would happen. My other friends and I had warned her not to buy flowers that the parents of the little girl would just send her back. But she would not listen.
And now that I'm back in Thailand, and again I see beggars and young children wander the streets asking for money, I wonder if the task is to do something good or just a supportive flawed system. In many parts of the world, you will see children jewelry and flowers for sale from the West. Look at the parents with a child "asleep" in her lap, begging to win sympathy. Finally, the parents know what we know: it is to say to a child, no difficult. You feel bad for them automatically. You think about the poverty they live, the life that they lead, and think, "Well, I'll give a little and help."
If the people were not giving these children would not be there. And as much as the people protest and shoo the children away, open many other people their portfolios in the hope of doing something good. We look at the woman with the baby in her arms, reached in his pocket, and go, "OK, just a little."
When I see this beggar in the street, I am often torn on what to do. On the one hand I do not want to perpetuate the system. I do not want that the children instead of learning in school to be out selling jewelry. I do not want the parents their children as an abbreviation for fast cash. I want to be children used as emotional blackmail. I want to sleep at 10 pm, not drunk to do with angry tourists who are angry at them.
But I know that many poor families often do so out of necessity. You simply need the money. I often think about Bangladesh. Back in the 190s, as a child exploitative work was the cause du jour, the focus was on Bangladeshi sweatshop. There were boycotts. A crying Kathy Griffin. Revolt. Legislation. Clothing Manufacturer cracked on suppliers down, set the children. reducing child labor and in the West could sleep peacefully.
Years later, I remember reading a newspaper article about a study that what happened with the children in Bangladesh to pursue. It turned out, they did not go to school. They ended up as beggars on the streets. The families needed the income for food. And if they could not make clothes work, they could work on the streets.
The need for food trumps all other needs.
I remember once walking behind this guy and his child in a part of Bangkok I often went with my friends. The man some junky stuff I sold not wanted. But one day I walked past him, and the despair that pleading in his voice just made me stop.
"Just look. Please. Please," he said.
I'd never seen such a sincere look of despair face on someone as I did that night. I do not know if it was a part of the game "money", but I just could not with his child look at this guy and stuff nobody wanted and not be moved. I pulled out my wallet and handed the man 1000 baht (just over $ 30 USD). He was speechless by the money, but I just could not go past him without helping more. The sadness in his eyes was just too real ... just too noticeable.
giving money to beggars often provides support to more than a black and white choice between support and no flawed system. Many of these people lack a real social support structure to help them out of poverty. Thailand has no social assistance program. (Just as most of the Third World, where you can see such abject poverty and so many beggars.) You are on your own.
And so to hate in spite of the system, I give a rule. If there is change in my wallet, I give it to the homeless and beggars in the world. It's just too hard to say no. My heart breaks for them.
And I know that kind of point. They feed on your sympathy. It is difficult, especially with the children.
What are you doing? Do you give? Do not give? What's the answer here? Is there a? I am interested in knowing how to deal with this situation as you see it unfold around the world.
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