Doesn’t
the state take care of them?
No. To take care of street kids is up to private and
parochial initiatives. For example the nuns who look after
the kids go round the shops each day and put up plastic
bags at the entrance doors. In the evenings they collect
the bags, and whatever they have been given is used to cook
for the kids the next day.
As
one can imagine both quantity and content of the donations
vary wildly - sometimes there’s nothing in the bags, most
of the time there isn’t enough food to fill their stomachs,
and terms like ‘balanced diet’ or “nutritional” are just
that: words without a meaning. When Mrs. Winter accompanied
Tom to one of the houses he oversees and saw what was
happening there she went straight to a canteen-kitchen and
bought food for the 25 kids. It was a proper meal with
chicken meat and fruits, enough to last another day too …
and it was under €25.
How
about donations in kind?
To send goods is quite expensive and is therefore only
worth it for items which cannot be produced in or would
still be expensive in India (glasses are a
good
example).
Transport (and thereby environmental) costs can far exceed
the actual value of the goods being send. An exception are
large scale catastrophes where it is important that help is
being delivered quickly (tents, blankets, clean water). But
in general cash donations not only help better but they
help twice. For one thing donating money helps to supply
food, clothing, and accommodation to the street kids, but
on the other hand buying locally also helps the small
farmers and merchants which are not rich enough to be able
to help. When Mrs. Winter revisited the kids and heard that
they do not have any school clothing she went out and
bought some rolls of fabric from which the nuns made the
shirts - which did not only benefit the children …
What
percentage of donations will reach those in need?
That strongly depends on where you donate. Large
organizations have permanent employes, have to pay for
advertising, rent, heating, phone travel retirement plans,
etc - all this comes under the term “administrative
charges” and can consume 20-80% of the donated money. Small
organizations and private initiatives are more cost
effective as they are run by volunteers, often both in the
donor and the recipient countries. On the other hand one
has to take care when donating to private initiatives - far
to many crooks try to take advantage of the helpfulness of
others.
What is special about the relief project “India’s Street
Kids” is that 100% of the donated money
reaches
the street kids - not even bank account fees need to be
paid (neither in Germany nor in India). Both Mrs. Winter
and Rev. Tom are well known and respected figures in and
around Gössenheim (Rev. Tom is also assistant to the Bishop
of Kerala), and they both guarantee with their good name
that all the money reaches those in need. Their good
reputation was instrumental in getting the backing of banks
(which provide free bank accounts and transfers to India),
local businesses, schools, kindergardens, and many many
private supporters - even those who don’t hold much truck
with the church.
Is
providing relief support always a good thing?
No. It depends on the kind of help you are willing to
give.
This
became painfully obvious during the starvation crises in
the 1980s and 1990s in Africa. Many nations donated their
harvest surplus to help the starving, but mandated that the
grain had to be distributed for free. What seemed sensible
at first glance had two catastrophic consequences - on the
one hand the price of grain on the World markets stayed
high pushing some of the countries dependent on buying
grain deeper into poverty, on the other hand it ruined the
small farmers who could no longer sell their home grown
grain. This made Africa even more dependent on relief
support and exacerbated the situation in the following
years.
