Tonight on the train a girl of about 16 approached me, holding the hand of a younger girl, perhaps 13. The older girl asked me if I had some money to spare, possibly a small note, for her and her sister as they are homeless. I gave the girl $4, a smile and wishes for a good night. The rest of the carriage gave shakes of the head. This situation raises many questions.
I have always been a strong believer in always giving money when asked for it in the street. My main reasoning behind doing this is that showing compassion for this person means so much more, on a bigger scale than the money means to them. The smile, the understanding, the empathy, the kind words, the hope, the trust etc. that this person receives means so much to this person. Generally people don't understand that there is so much more to homelessness than lack of money and therefore lack of a home. Usually what has significantly contributed to this person's situation is something tragic; mental illness, drug addiction, domestic violence, child abuse and it goes on. This person has gone through so much hard times in their last few years than most people go through in their whole lives. And sure, while they'll appreciate the money, for drugs, drink, food, shelter or whatever, I believe that restoring their faith that the world can be a good place, and people will help them is so valuable. This faith is required before any change can occur, if this person experiences learned helplessness they will never be able to help themselves.
But lately I have been challenging my actions of giving money to those who ask. I have been asking does this reinforce their behaviors and homelessness as a whole? What I can be sure about, is that regularly buying 'the Big Issue' and spending some of my time volunteering to improve the situation is the first thing I'll be doing before giving to beggars. This of course addresses the problem and the cause, correction and prevention which is fantastic.
But bringing it back to the original question, is it beneficial or detrimental to give money to people who ask on the street? Does the income they recieve from begging reinforce living the way they are? Is it as simple as, I can afford to hand over coins so 'why not'?
Hmmm, now I am too tired, so this will be left here. It is a topic that I am sure will be revisited in other forms at other times. What I will do now is take a moment to appreciate what I have. Lucky for me, I now get to sleep in a comfy, warm and safe bed.
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I was always on the fence about this sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty careless with my cash, so when I got paid weekly or fortnightly there was really only two or three days where I felt like I had any money... by day four, I was scraping coins together to buy a daily ticket. So chances are if someone was asking for some coin on or soon after pay day, I'd help a brother out, but otherwise just a shrug and "Sorry, I'm out of cash."
A little while back, though, I had an experience that pushed me closer to saying no in general. It was the day before I was expecting my pay to go in, so I had a whole mess of coins on me. Someone told me the pay was already in so I went to the ATM and discovered it was, took out some cash and bought my smokes.
I was having a smoke downstairs from work when a guy came up to me asking for some spare change, "I'm starving" he said with a pained expression. I actually felt really good that my luck of getting paid a day early was going to benefit this dude, so I handed over all the coins on me... easily over $15 thanks to the change from my smokes, it took two scoops of my pocket to get it all out.
And with two full hands of gold and silver the dude eyeballs the $10 change from my smokes sitting next to a few $50 notes from the ATM poking out of the top of my wallet and asks for that, too. Well that was the end of my good will, I told him to count the coins and he'd see I'd already given him around $20, and as he held them up to do so, I knocked them out of his hand and said THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS and went back upstairs to resume work, leaving him to pick them up off the ground.
Since then, whenever I feel myself slipping away from my stance of "Fuck 'em" I remember that guy.