Giving and Dignity

How we can get away from condescending attitude when you are giving 

The subtle undertone of condescension associated with Giving has always bothered me, that the have’s are trying to give to the have not’s and they are a notch higher. This thought has made many people give anonymously. Others, who have the same feeling, use a larger umbrella of a organization, the dilemma in this way is that sometimes the organization becomes larger than life, the kind of Big Brother who might try and run lives, states or countries.

I am sure all of us have read how the IMF or World Bank does not understand cultures and specific country mindsets and how their help is not a help… (btw… most people do agree on their condescending approach) but that is not the topic I wish to highlight in this post.

Here I want us to think about giving in a way where there is an individual touch to it, it is efficient (see my earlier post Efficiency of Giving) and aligns us with the cause or person. The way is to lend money to help a social/individual cause through kiva.org

What is Kiva? It is a micro-finance website, but with a difference, here a crowd gives $25 each towards a project or a goal (interest free) and the recipient repays it back to Kiva, and every month Kiva put a portion of $25 back in your account.

The concept of micro-finance (check what Kiva as to say about micro-finance) has many admirers, and some have deployed micro-finance in a profitable way too (read this article on a micro-finance IPO) and see if you agree with it. Muhammad Yunus — the famous Bangladeshi banker — used it for the betterment of people of Bangladesh and won a Nobel Prize for it.

The beauty of Kiva’s way of micro-finance is combining it with Giving. In my opinion I favor it over many other forms of giving because:

• The recipient takes with dignity whereby he or she will return the money back
• You help someone stand on their own feet rather than give them a hand out (the concept of teaching someone how to fish rather than giving them fish to eat)
• Your money re-circulates and helps many people over and over again

If you need to learn more about kiva.org click on this link.

Of course, this approach cannot be used for say eradication of polio or AIDs research but it we can help one person/family at a time. If you want give for a Big cause please do but give a thought to the efficiency of your giving (see my earlier post Efficiency of Giving)

It has worked for me and made me feel good. Hope it works for you to and if it does please check it out and see how you can make a difference in someone’s life.

Disclosure — The link for kiva.org gives you and me an additional $25 to Give, so you (and me) can contribute to a couple of additional causes and help some one somewhere in this world.

Also, I don’t work for kiva, this is a voluntary effort.