Caritas and Typhoon Odette

 

Some of the devastation from Typhoon Odette, near our home.

More on the primary virtue, charity.

Many people suppose they have done their bit by paying their taxes and chipping in, in return perhaps for a tax deduction, to some major charity.

This is not what Christian charity is about. To begin with, it is impersonal—you are feeling nothing for the people you help. You do not and need not see them. You are more or less paying to make them go away.  As with Dives ad Lazarus, the point is not to end poverty. That can never happen. The point is the beggar at your door. The point is to hug a leper.

In my experience, the big charities are also a scam. They do not exist to help the poor. They are there to help the rich—to salve their conscience, in the first place. To give them good employment, in the second.

More signs of damage o the main highway nearby.

Their business model relies on advertising. Advertising and PR is everything. Some significant portion of the money you put in just goes to drumming up more money. The better-known the charity, as a rule, the more they have been spending on advertising and PR. The honest charity that conserves the money for the poor simply cannot compete, and probably goes out of business.

Much of the rest of your donation will go to salaries for executives, who will be living quite well. The charities must compete for talent, after all, against other businesses and government. 

Expensive drinking water.

Then there are the usual expenses of running any organization: office space, equipment, legal and accounting services and supplies. Lots of good employment for professionals.

The rest goes to “programs.” But this still does not mean it goes to those in need. It pays the salaries of the local officials, their overhead, the well=-paid professionals they may hire. How much really benefits those in need?

Getting to the coast for washing water.

There is little accountability in charities. There are no market forces—beggars can’t be choosers, and the destitute have no social leverage. People tend not to ask tough questions—after all, charities are good guys, right? How dare you try to do them harm? So even for the money that gets down to the local level, and is not needed for salaries and overhead… the typical official on the spot has little incentive but his own conscience to actually go out and do anything. If he did, too aggressively, he would probably be hounded out by his colleagues for not going along with the game and shaming them. They will do enough for the next photo op, then motor home. That’s about it. Worse, the front-line positions are certain to attract some people who like to bully.

My own family is trapped in Cebu, Philippines. Cebu was hit dead on December 16 by Typhoon Odette / Rai, at category four. Many people there are without shelter, most seem to have lost their roofs. There is no electricity, no water, no signal, no communications. For some days the food markets were closed. Now food or drinking water is just extremely expensive, markups of 1000%, in a very poor country, and gasoline is hard to find in order to make it to the markets. Not that many own a private car—but the tricycles and jeepneys are often not running. 

Sister-in-law Judy, struck by a motorcycle while walking to work. (There were no jeepneys.) She's back home now.

Cebu is not remote or hard to get to—it is the second or third largest city in the Philippines. And it is right on the water, with a good port, even if infrastructure is damaged. Nevertheless, my wife reports that no charities or NGOs have shown up yet, as of January 2. Neither has the federal government, the military or national guard. The destitute are left to fend for themselves. She is in a position to know, too. Her sister-in-law, now sheltering with her, works in the local baranguay office—the local government. They have heard nothing.

Filipinos are familiar with the experience. Nobody is there. They have to help one another.

This is probably almost as true in Canada. I have some experience, having worked with the mentally ill in Toronto. If you phone the office of one of the big charities, they are never in. If you leave a message, they do not call back. If you get an appointment, they often do not show up. If they show up, they will fill in some paperwork in your presence, and suggest you go elsewhere. Rarely, they will offer your some random service that you do not need and is actually cheaper on the open market. It seems structured to benefit some professional in need of business, rather than anyone in need.

Damage in Danao, just up the coast from Cebu.

The secret, if you really want to help people, is to have some personal contact on the ground—the equivalent of Lazarus at your door. Failing that, it is to go through a church. 

To begin with, the churches already have an organization in place, right down to the neighbourhood level. None of your donation need go for administration or advertising or flying people in from afar who do not know the local situation. Next, the churches and their personnel can at least be reasonably hoped to be acting out of conscience, and therefore motivated to do as charity suggests. They can often deploy volunteer labour. And they even have some market incentive to actually give the money to the poor. For a secular charity, giving anything to the poor beyond a photo op is a dead loss. Churches, however, are in competition for adherents in each locality. Help those in need, and they may start attending services. They may also start contributing to the collection plate, or volunteering at the church.

Damage in Consolacion, Cebu suburb.

When I was working with the mentally ill, the charities that were actually on the ground and helping, as I recall, were the local parishes of the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army, the Franciscans, a local consortium of Quaker, Baptist, Anglican, and Catholic churches, evangelical groups like the Scott Mission, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Non-Christian groups seem to do similar work, but only within their own faith communities.  The famous secular charities were invisible. Government seemed to be good only for cutting welfare cheques, or what used to be called “family benefits.” Not that this was trivial—but it was the one thing not lost in the bureaucratic fog. Making me think a flat guaranteed minimum income might be the best approach there. Otherwise, it is revelatory how absent government and the big charities were, with all their financial resources, in comparison to these religious groups, working with so little.

Unfortunately, eve some of the religious groups have since gone “woke.” This means they stop spending on the poor, and start spending it on “advocacy”: on salaries for rich bureaucrats. Being “woke” is always an alibi for not helping the poor. “It’s up to the rich to do it.” And the speaker is never themselves rich enough to qualify.

Meanwhile, charity give to the Catholic Church now risks being hijacked to pay lawyers’ salaries, or to pay compensation claims to victims of homosexual predatory priests, or the supposed victims of the residential schools. You may consider some of these expenditures worthy, but your contribution is liable not to be going to hurricane victims or refugees or the homeless or mentally ill.

Conclusion: you probably have to do it yourself. Get personally involved in a local religious charity and get to know the people who need help. For cases abroad, get to know people who have emigrated from that country, and still have contacts there. They can advise on how to help; and can put a human face on it. Which you need to make it meaningful.