Beyond charity

I would never claim to know everything there is about Philippine society. Only a fool would proclaim that, for to do so is an admission of one's ignorance and presuming arrogance.

Nor would I claim that I fully understand the big picture. For I have lived and experienced only a fraction (my social exposures are limited to a mere few days or hours at a time), and while some would say that that is enough to estimate the rest, I beg to differ.

To fully understand poverty, you need to experience poverty. Just the same, to fully understand the situation within a community, you need to immerse yourself in that community. Live with the people, live like them. You need to communicate with them. It makes the difference between simply knowing the facts and understanding the situation. Doing so gives faces to concepts like poverty and social inequality; it gives whole new meaning to these concepts.

Studying theories and knowing hard facts and statistics can only do so much. Without actually stepping out of one's comfort zone to mingle with the masses, one is but an armchair activist. All talk, no action. It's like standing inside an ivory tower, seeing and knowing everything that goes on, but not doing anything about it. (In fact, I think I am guilty of this. There's this community I promised I'd return to, but I still hadn't found the time. Before this semester ends, I hope I can return and live some time with the people there.)

And when I say concrete action, I do not refer to charity and all those condescending "acts of mercy" of the elite. Many non-profit organizations and/or charity institutions don't really "act." They just "help"...or they think they help, without fully understanding the conditions of the people they are helping. It's enough to paint them as poor and pitiable, without even considering why and how they came to be poor.

They don't realize that only by understanding the how and why of things can we come up with real and lasting solutions, beyond charity and short-term aids.