Who Is Charity Really For?

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Chris Jordan

Dr. Rodieck

Wrt 101

01/01/2017

Who is “Charity” really for?

        These days it seems everywhere you go there is a charity looking for a donation.  At the corner store, you see a bucket with slot for your change to help the children.  When checking out at the hardware store a dollar will buy you a shamrock for the Muscular Dystrophy Association to help with people effected by ALS and other muscular related issues.  Looking over at a red light you may see a smiling face holing a sign that says “Church on the Street, Help the homeless!”.  Perhaps you may even see another not so cheerful face at the next light with a sign that reads “Disabled Vet, out of work and am just hungry”.  Each one of these touches us in different ways depending on what in our life has affected us personally but how do we determine what is a worthy cause and what is not.   The focus of this paper will be on the homeless.  

        There are so many ways in modern time to help the homeless population.  As a child, I can remember spending time in a soup kitchen through a youth volunteer group.  They would come through the line and we would serve them food.  Usually they would smile and were generally friendly as we put food on their plates.  That experience is one that has been impactful on my character I’m sure.  I am not sure that it made much of a difference for the person receiving the food.  Had I not shown up more than likely the food would have been served by some other youth putting in hours for some volunteer organization.  If the building didn’t exist where the food came from the food would have come from somewhere.  And if there was no

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food at all to serve them would they need the food or would they adapt and find the natural human instinct to survive inside of them and get their own food.  I suppose with the mentally ill there is a possibility of not being able to survive without the care of another especially when dealing with the homeless but have we considered why they are homeless.  Is it a man or woman worthy of assistance?  Having two brothers that are homeless due to drug addiction has given me a unique perspective on the issue.  People usually have points in their lives where the choice in front of them will send them down an irreversible path.  If we look back at our lives closely, for the majority those points are clear.  For most us those choices sent us down the right path.  Sure, they may have been times when each of us has made a poor decision but there was always a line.  I have seen that line crossed and it is my opinion in most cases there is no turning back.  Drug use is a perfect example of this.  Regardless of what came first the drugs or the homelessness the drugs can and will with long term use cause mental illness.  Usually the so-called fix for mental illness is prescribing more drugs.  Now for the rest of your life homeless not you are on some form of drug.  Is it societies responsibility to support these people?  This doesn’t cover all the homeless obviously but is a good snapshot of a large population of homeless.  It is only in modern times that a person could be mentally ill and homeless and survive.  Another thing to consider is that as our population becomes denser there is a staggering rise in mental illness.  There is also an improvement in medicine that helps keep the people “artificially” alive.  These are contributors to the problem of the rise in homelessness.

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