Feel Charity

Today, I was visiting a shelter for boys – some of them are orphans, others had abusive parents. I was expecting fairly miserable conditions, and that was exactly what I found. 31 little creatures and a handful of teachers living in a two storey bungalow with no garden or playground. Iron furniture – double-deck beds and chest-high closets – cramming their tiny rooms. There’s not enough of even this basic iron furniture – since not every boy has a bed, they tend to pile up their mattresses in the middle of the room and sleep all together, hugging each other like little kittens.

I was lucky to visit the shelter during school holidays, so I got to meet most of the boys. They are truly wonderful creatures – curious, friendly and lively. They are flocking around a table with colourful books, curious about animals, places, Apache Indians and ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, for some of the boys, these colourful books are the only education they will ever receive. There are 5 boys in the shelter, whose parents forgot or lost their birth certificates, the kids were condemned “stateless” and now, no school will accept them for studies.

While we are flipping through the bright pages of children’s encyclopedia, Jeroen – a young volunteer teacher from the Netherlands – is telling me snippets from the life of the shelter. What really amazes and puzzles me, is that the shelter runs completely on voluntary donations – the state doesn’t pay a penny to the shelter. There are 2 Chinese kids in the shelter, the rest are Tamil boys. The shelter is not allowed to take on Malay kids, because they cannot provide Halal food and they don’t have prayer rooms. The shelter does not comply with these demands because Halal food is more expensive and there is not enough space as it is to accommodate an extra prayer room . Yet, since there are no Malay kids, there is no government support. Kind of a vicious circle.

On my way back home, it is not the scars on the little bodies, nor the skinny arms and short cropped hair, nor the 5 boys who cannot go to school that hover on my mind, it is the sticky thought that the state refuses to help the shelter. I cannot believe that there may be a reason enough to decide that one shelter might not deserve to be supported. Selective welfare is like someone, trying to decide that you are less miserable than another, or you are miserable all right, but you are not important enough to be helped. When I think of those little boys, I cannot imagine who would dare to judge that they should be left to the mercy of voluntary donations.

Yesterday, I was at another big Indian wedding here in Malaysia, and I was talking to one of the girls about charity. She is carving out time in her busy work schedule to do some charity work, and add purpose to her life. She confessed that, in the beginning, it was not easy to talk publicly about her charity work. Even now, most people would ask: “Why are you wasting your time?”

This stuck in my mind and I started thinking, isn’t charity something so fulfilling and amazing? No, to tell you the truth, at least in Malaysia, charity is completely not sexy. Here, most of the organisations in the non-profit or charity sphere are dominated by foreigners. People from all around the world are eager to come and work for little or no reward to solve problems Malaysians don’t want to even acknowledge

On the other hand, Malaysia has a large proportion of very rich people. Their wives, who don’t need to earn an income beyond “pocket money”, often end up doing some thing or another to keep them occupied. Besides the bustling social life, there are really two options – either open a little business, a pet project, such as jewelery, cooking or fashion; or, as an alternative, find a job – a busy-job, not a purpose-job. And some do charity, sporadicly and somewhat apathetically, “soft charity”, something like making glamor shots to raise awareness in non-controversial, although surely important, issues.

Wouldn’t it be great if more affluent women got involved in charity, and I mean hard-core charity, the not sexy kind of charity, something a bit controversial and not generally liked. If these rich women could meet eye to eye some of the most vulnerable and marginal communities in Malaysia, talk to them, understand them and sympathise with them, wouldn’t that be amazing? I’m convinced it would make a huge difference in this society.

I’ve been donating 5% of my income every month. Well, since I started having an income. It does feel amazing. But this is not what I was going to share.

From day one, when I decided to give away X amount of money to make this world a better place, I bumped into the question: “Who do I give the money to?” When you only have a little to share, you want to be sure that even this little bit is going to make a difference.

I know there is a bit of my money in this amazing incubator for the prematurely born babies.

Here is the dilemma – those who truly need the money (grass-root NGOs) usually do not have the voice to ask for it, and those who look sleek and credible (big foundations and charities) seem rich enough, where a little drop that I can offer will hardly make any difference. And then there is another dilemma – are the little players efficient enough to really make the difference, and are the big players going to channel my money to the charity or their own administration?In the end of the day, you just want to buy that vaccination or a textbook for a kid, and not get your money lost among the expenses of running the charity.

And then there is another question – how can I reach out to the most vulnerable people? And who are the most vulnerable people?

I decided to donate my money in Estonia, because that is where I am from. But I live in Malaysia, do charitable work here, and the misery of people and problems that I encounter here, in Malaysia, seem so enormous, that nothing in Estonia seems to match them. But then you can look at Burma (one of the least developed countries in the world), and problems in Malaysia seem like nothing to match.

I was getting increasingly overwhelmed, until, one day, I decided to take a deep breath and do it one step at a time. I decided to look at it from the perspective of one human being – a sick child in Estonia is just as unhappy as a sick child in Burma. Helping just one child will still reduce the amount of human suffering in the world, even if just by one child. And the idea is not in me alone being able to reach out to every single person in the world and to help the most miserable soul on the planet, but in every one of us helping at least one unfortunate being, making even the smallest contribution to make this world a better place.

With some kind of a peace of mind, I started looking into Estonian charitable causes, I donated to some hospitals, and… I got stuck again. I just couldn’t find decent information on which would be the best cause to donate to. And then I came across a donation portal on the website of Swedbank – one of Estonia’s biggest banks – it had it all nice and clear. It might not be good enough if you are running a donor organisation, but it is more than enough for a private individual.

I want to share the link with everyone: https://www.swedbank.ee/about/support/donate/projects (you can see it in English if you press ENG in the corner of the banner picture), and I hope that at least every Estonian, who comes across this blog article, will feel like giving. It is so easy, and so amazingly fulfilling!

I have always believed in America, despite all the shame and criticism it has been facing over the past years. Listen, guys, we’ve all had our bad leaders! The previous president of Estonia, Mr Rüütel, was not in too much favour. And sometimes, we re-elect our bad leaders – Mr Rüütel used to be comrade Rüütel and head the Communist Party of Estonia when it was still a part of the USSR.

The picture above is taken from Postimees.

What amazes me is how some countries, those which are truly democratic, are able to change. Change in spite of anything. Americans have proven to the whole world that they are able to change. Democracy is not a mere word there, it is reality. This is particularly striking on the background of some other self-appointed democracies, where power swiftly changes from one closet-tyrant to another. Or better yet, where power doesn’t change hands at all, the tyrant changes his titles, so as to keep the nice theatrical smile to the rest of the world, while pointing his finger at a fig-leave constitution.

I am not fond of political speeches, since I’ve written a score and I know how they come about. But this time, I was keeping my breath reading Obama’s victory speech. It was inspiring and sincere. I congratulate Americans on their choice. And I want to thank them too, for, as one of my friends said, I was able to wake up to a bit better world this morning.

I’m not following the news too much these days, but once in a while, I do come across the news on Russian TV channels. Predictably, they all start with Putin’s 10 minutes on how good has life become in Russia, but here I’m risking to drift away… I was actually going to write about Ukraine.

Since Ukraine has chosen to start “westernising”, particularly, since the latest turmoils didn’t end up in the change of direction eastwards, all the news from and about Ukraine have been tinted by desperate attempts of sarcasm. Political maneuvering in Ukraine is never called anything but “the circus” or “playing democracy”. Everything that comes out of this country is ridiculed by the Russian news agencies.

There is one thing I particularly dislike about the Russian foreign policy – the attitude “you are either with us, or against us”. When it comes to humans, such kind of idealism is a sign of immaturity. Russia could do much better than kindergarten style whining and bullying.