What are you getting for Christmas? What are you giving your loved ones? These are the questions that consume many people’s thoughts and attention at this time of year. Yes, it’s supposed to be joy to the world, peace, love, and togetherness, but as we all know, the reality is rather different. Yes, there’s some increase of charitable giving during the holiday season—toy drives for children, gift baskets for the ‘less fortunate’ etc—or so it appears anyway, with donating companies/entities making sure that their gift-giving is photographed and widely shared. Unfortunately, many of these acts are just brief bursts of ‘feel goodness’ that look nice like fireworks in the sky but rapidly fade away.
The fact is that hunger, hopelessness, and need are prevalent in Guyana year-round and occasional charitable giving, while addressing immediate needs, does little to change the conditions of oppression that keep people wanting. Charity alone—without addressing the underlying root causes of economic injustice—does nothing to improve the long-term quality of life. As the saying goes: give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day but teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime (well, as long as the river isn’t polluted or dammed). Quality education, jobs that pay a living wage, safe working conditions, affordable and accessible health care and childcare, these are the things that people need to become financially independent. However, these things require substantial long-term investment; it is far quicker and easier to just drop off a bag of rice and some sugar.
There is a role for charitable giving; the government after all cannot do everything at all time. The larger charities have staff, office buildings, their own vehicles, and often work in tandem with government agencies, providing services and items which government entities may lack or be unable to provide in a timely manner. It becomes problematic however when charities take on tasks that the government should be providing to the citizens, thereby relieving the elected officials of doing their duty to the populace. This is also worrisome as charities can be given a lot of leeway with which to act because people are so grateful for the services they provide. Independent monitoring, evaluation, and oversight can be lacking and donations frequently misspent, not necessarily reaching those in need as the donors intended.
Also, because most charities focus most of their time and energy simply on meeting the immediate needs of people, not on providing them with the tools, skills, and resources they need to become fiscally empowered and independent, the pool of poor people never diminishes. As such, the charity ensures that it
