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What is charity or donation?
It’s a willingness of a person to help others with the surplus or sufficient treasure he has. It could be in many forms apart from monetary donations. Volunteering is one good example it’s a way to donate yourself ,your sweat, your efforts.
Ways to help:
-Select a child – donate for his education
-select a family – help them grow by being an advisor /educator
-open up opportunities for the weak class (cloth stitching etc.)
-educating someone in your free time. This is the best donation one can do
-volunteer in food donation or activity where educated person is required like teaching.
-open or create a platform which can be easily consumed by the weak class to get work or help.
Many a times we think of donating and somehow do not trust an NGO or an ashram. Many a time its true as well that behind the curtains of NGO there is a black to white money conversion market. I personally was part of an NGO whose owner died in a car accident due to drug abuse case. This we did not know until the whole scandal was published in news paper.
I once went to the ashram and by looking at it, it seemed like it was more than taken care of and still people poured in to donate. My point here is that again there is a imbalance between the ashram with less popularity and the ones residing in the heart of the city with greater popularity and there too its like Jain ashram , Christian ashram and so on. Where people from one sect will support their preferred ashrams.
Then question is how do you figure out the best way to donate?
The answer is you will have to be patience and invest some time in finding who are really the needy ones and I would suggest one must survey his own locality.
One way is to give money and get away with the situation. Nowadays begging is like a small business. The money they get is not used for the right purpose. The agents in between will get their commission and the beggar will remain beggar for a lifetime. See begging should not become a habit instead they must be empowered with some sort of job or work which will help them as a consistent source of income and slowly they can improve their lives. We must not encourage these type of beggars who want to have this easy money. Someone who is ill , someone who is disabled must get the help from society but young men and women who are fit n fine must not continue such work. I have seen beggars asking for milk packets , pen and stationaries which they return to the shopkeepers to get back the money with some commission to the shop owner. At least in a city if one is willing then he/she can get any simple job like housekeeping or household jobs. And I think those who are really willing to out in effort and feel like they should earn their bread with respect do not find it difficult to get out of such adverse conditions.
Basically your help should be in such a way that it should empower the underprivileged and not get them in a comfort zone. many places which serve free food have become a hub for lazy and ill motivated people. give them food for some work instead. anything for free is undervalued.
Its more of a nurture thing rather than one time investment. Like how you grow or convert a small sapling into a tree. It’s a time taking activity but the results are sweet and long lasting. Once the tree is mature it will bear fruits year on year. Metaphorically I want to explain this case you can consider supporting a family in terms of money ,guidance or job support. In turn when this family becomes self sufficient they will definitely help others and so on.
Few examples: donation in temple is required for its maintenance but popular temples need to give back the surplus amount they are gathering. People as well should understand that God is created by us and a healthy maintenance will not require such huge donations.
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