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?”

Angelina Jolie is a UNHCR (UN agency for refugees) Goodwill Ambassador.

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.