[dailydriver]

Being an educator, I regularly get to witness many selfless acts of charity and philanthropy bear wonderful fruits.

Very recently, I was invited to a gentleman's wedding. I first came across him as a sixteen year old hapless chap, alien to the ways of the world but determined nevertheless to take on it with full might. Being economically challenged, he would supplement his family income by taking up blue collar jobs in his free time. Once, I stumbled upon him digging up and carrying mud at a construction site. In a few days, he was promoted to the task of mixing mortar and that was when he had to shift to a new institute.

While under our acdemic care, we had pooled a few pennies and got him some supplies; but more importantly, had put him in touch with a few organisations who help steer the careers of poor but academically brilliant students.

The boy's eagerness to learn and his hard work made an impression on one such org; they took care of his complete engineering study expenses.

Today, he has, apart from setting his family's affairs straight, helped a few others too in their studies.

* * *

In an other case, a similarly endowed but marginally well off student was helped in terms of career guidance and finances. Still in his final year of studies, he somehow lost track, got addicted to booze, betting and online gambling. Recently, he was found hanging in his room, with a note listing his debts and holding himself responsible for the death.

We are still struggling to come to terms with the abrupt and shocking loss.

* * *

Last year, finding that many were finding it difficult to pay their tuition fee, we decided to sponsor the entire class supplies for twelve students. Most were orphans, a few homeless too.

At the end of the semester, I casually took a look at their exam results and was crestfallen to find that nearly half of them hadn't cleared even the easiest of papers. Two of them had barely even qualified for the exams, because of shortage of attendance.

Upon speaking to them individually, I was shocked to find the callous attitude that seemed to dictate their approach to life.

* * *

In all of the above cases, we did our best, with the noblest of intentions.

The results however, have been drastically different.

We take them in our stride and move on. We pan our sights across the field and look for the next opportunity to share God's bounty.

[SN88]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

I think I could help by sharing my experience having gone down an identical path.
...

Thank you Mr Narayan for your kind words and give yourself a pat on the back as well for all you have been giving back in your own capacity. Honestly a lot of people begin with a noble thought but it fizzles out when it actually comes to doing it and going the long way of sustained efforts. It is people like you and my father who make a difference by not loosing that determination and genuine efforts to help people who have truly been unlucky/ underprivileged. I hope many of us soon realise that privilege must be shared, it is a duty rather than favor.

Originally Posted by blackwasp

First of all please accept my kudos for thinking about someone else who's in a hardship and working to make their lives easier. Regards to Ola / Uber thing, I can add 2 cents since I run a fleet of cars based in Mumbai. The work is hard and at many times giving away a car is not a good idea unless you are employing the drivers. You need to monitor that they do the work properly.

I did think of buying cars and employing drivers, but that is not what I can follow and truly we just want people to be independent. We are all doing different work at home and very busy with work and I don't want to do anything half heartedly if I cannot give it all the time this would require.

[AltoLXI]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

At the cost of some errors and deep embarrassments I have learnt that if we do philanthropy we need to be detached from the poor in a nice sort of way and not get taken in by their bedraggled state or cowering or folded hands.

From the "Crime and punishment"- Marmeladov, when he meets Raskolnikov the first time, tells him,

“Honoured sir,” he began almost with solemnity, “poverty is not a vice, that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue, and that that’s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary—never—no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by SN88

I hope many of us soon realize that privilege must be shared, it is a duty rather than favor.

e.g. a person borrows money for a car and he repays it back in say 5 years, we could rotate that money to someone else and so on. But under no circumstances we want to put any form of lender pressure if you know what I mean.Dad is hesitant and simply says that we should forget about the money and the person can use it as he wills and he will be responsible there after.

These are the most important sentences in your narration. Your father is a wise person. He is right. We should work on our inner selves to give without expectation of reward or recognition. I'm sure most readers will agree we don't want to be like the worthies in this photo below giving two bananas to a poor patient. Those poor bananas are bearing a lot of karmic weight!!

Avoid getting into giving out loans to be repaid to you. It could mean trouble especially on social media by an unscrupulous beneficiary - and you can never tell whose head will turn when.

[anjan_c2007]

Firstly, kudos to your father and you for pursuing such a praiseworthy job. Since you are doing charity with noble intentions and spending a lot, I would suggest you to devote a part of your resources to train the prospective persons desirous of such financial aid. The training session could be for a week or so and can be imparted by qualified resource persons. You can pay such resource persons a good honorarium. The disinterested ones could be weeded out as some personality traits emerge during such full day sessions.

Also the age old adage is timeless:-

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

[NewUser123]

I think what you guys are doing is really commendable. It’s my aspiration to do something like this too when I am financially independent.

However, reading “Banker to the Poor”, has taught me that just giving money away will never be appreciated by anyone (well, maybe only by a few)

If I were to do this, I might first have them educated in managing personal finances first, not an entire degree but the basics in a few hours spread over a few weeks.

After that, only enable people who have some buy-in (as someone earlier rightly pointed out). This buy-in need not be purely financial, though.

Also, in the interests of helping more and more people, I would also have some sort of payback to the charity.

I may not be making my points as clearly as I hoped. I suggest you read “Banker to the Poor” for a lot of ideas and reasoning behind solutions to helping the less fortunate amongst us.

[charanreddy]

A big thumbs up to your father and you for having such strong thoughts on giving back to the society.

If you don’t mind me giving a suggestion,
Please take a look at

https://www.globalgiving.org/project...eneurs/donate/

Our company has tied up with this org. And I feel some of the entries are deserving. However one has to trust the system and definitely we miss the satisfaction of doing some help with our own hands.

[SN88]

As usual T BHP gives out some genuine feedback and idea's. I got in touch with a school friend who is doing an outstanding job in spreading rural education as CSR through his start up which has scaled new heights. I also met a classmate who has been offering cheap internet services in the most rural of places. Very remote places in Arunachal, Mizoram have been given internet for the first time by him. Do check out Muft Internet, thats what he calls it.

Its amazing when you actually get down and start doing something how the help follows.