What do you tell your children about beggars?
I assume that most people have an attitude much like mine; that giving through registered charities is preferable to giving directly to the man or woman with the begging bowl on the street. That way we can be fairly sure that the money is put to good use rather than spent on drugs, alcohol, or passed onto some Fagin-type character who controls gangs of unfortunates. So unless the person with their hand out is offering you a Big Issue (which I guess doesn't really count as 'begging' per se, since you are given something in return), I tend to avoid them. Walk straight past them. Essentially, ignore them.
Sounds ugly when you put it like that, doesn't it?
Does to me, anyway.
I remember the first time I saw a beggar - as if it were yesterday. I was 17, on a school trip to Rome, walking with my friends along a hot and dusty street, dipping in and out of the shade offered by the shop awnings and suddenly, there she was. A dark-haired child, wearing what looked like vaguely ethnic clothes, messy and unkempt, head down, standing in front of a corner store.
Holding her hand out.
I was shocked. I came from middle England, from a small town in the Cotwsolds. Any holidays abroad (and there hadn't been that many in my life until that point) were always controlled by my parents and no doubt they had taken care to avoid such meetings before. This really was outside my experience. Surely this couldn't be happening? Not in Italy? Italy was part of Europe, surely there weren't beggars in Europe. (Ah, sweet innocence of youth). I gave her money - I can't remember how much but since I didn't have a lot myself, it will only have been a few coins - and walked on, wondering how a child ends up in a situation like that. I wonder now what happened to her.
Let's fast-forward nearly 30 years. I have a son of nearly the same age as the girl I saw in Rome. Sadly, he didn't have to wait until he was 17 to see his first beggar; I suspect that he wouldn't be able to tell you when that happened since begging now happens everywhere, even in the middle-London/middle-England we inhabited before moving to Moscow.
And in Moscow, there are definitely beggars. They wait by the cathedrals, by the church we go to on a Sunday, in supermarket carparks, in the metro. Unless you remain cocooned in your big 4x4 never looking out of the darkened windows, you can't avoid them. Most disturbingly, more than 50% of them have young children or babies with them. How can you turn away from and ignore a young woman pulling a 2 year old by the hand in a wet & windy supermarket carpark, as you cram your week's worth of shopping into the boot of the car? How can you step over the woman with the baby waiting by the gate outside Mass on a Sunday morning? What about the elderly lady kneeling and praying by the cathedal, the guy with no legs in the wheelchair waiting by the traffic lights, or the pensioner steering her blind husband through the crush on the metro asking for your help because their state pension isn't enough?
Can you give to all of them?
Of course you can't. So often, you end up giving to none of them.
As an adult I try to justify this in my head by counting up the hours spent proof-reading and editing documents and brochures for charities, by the money collected and donated to those same organisations, by the awareness I try to spread within the expat community here of the need for their time and money.
But my sons don't see that. And since they don't come shopping with me, they don't see the apple or banana I hand to the 2 year old outside the supermarket as his mother (if she is his mother) pockets the dollar I just gave her and - more often than not - tells me that's not enough.
I know hand-outs are not the answer. Give the man (or woman) a fishing rod, not a single fish; that's what we're supposed to do. Deal with the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms. But I want to teach my children not to be hard-hearted and turn away from those in need. Giving to those who require help now, today, to make it through to tomorrow, does not make them a soft touch, a mug, an easy prospect; it simply makes them human.
So. I would really like to know. What do you tell your children about beggars?
I assume that most people have an attitude much like mine; that giving through registered charities is preferable to giving directly to the man or woman with the begging bowl on the street. That way we can be fairly sure that the money is put to good use rather than spent on drugs, alcohol, or passed onto some Fagin-type character who controls gangs of unfortunates. So unless the person with their hand out is offering you a Big Issue (which I guess doesn't really count as 'begging' per se, since you are given something in return), I tend to avoid them. Walk straight past them. Essentially, ignore them.
Sounds ugly when you put it like that, doesn't it?
Does to me, anyway.
I remember the first time I saw a beggar - as if it were yesterday. I was 17, on a school trip to Rome, walking with my friends along a hot and dusty street, dipping in and out of the shade offered by the shop awnings and suddenly, there she was. A dark-haired child, wearing what looked like vaguely ethnic clothes, messy and unkempt, head down, standing in front of a corner store.
Holding her hand out.
I was shocked. I came from middle England, from a small town in the Cotwsolds. Any holidays abroad (and there hadn't been that many in my life until that point) were always controlled by my parents and no doubt they had taken care to avoid such meetings before. This really was outside my experience. Surely this couldn't be happening? Not in Italy? Italy was part of Europe, surely there weren't beggars in Europe. (Ah, sweet innocence of youth). I gave her money - I can't remember how much but since I didn't have a lot myself, it will only have been a few coins - and walked on, wondering how a child ends up in a situation like that. I wonder now what happened to her.
Let's fast-forward nearly 30 years. I have a son of nearly the same age as the girl I saw in Rome. Sadly, he didn't have to wait until he was 17 to see his first beggar; I suspect that he wouldn't be able to tell you when that happened since begging now happens everywhere, even in the middle-London/middle-England we inhabited before moving to Moscow.
And in Moscow, there are definitely beggars. They wait by the cathedrals, by the church we go to on a Sunday, in supermarket carparks, in the metro. Unless you remain cocooned in your big 4x4 never looking out of the darkened windows, you can't avoid them. Most disturbingly, more than 50% of them have young children or babies with them. How can you turn away from and ignore a young woman pulling a 2 year old by the hand in a wet & windy supermarket carpark, as you cram your week's worth of shopping into the boot of the car? How can you step over the woman with the baby waiting by the gate outside Mass on a Sunday morning? What about the elderly lady kneeling and praying by the cathedal, the guy with no legs in the wheelchair waiting by the traffic lights, or the pensioner steering her blind husband through the crush on the metro asking for your help because their state pension isn't enough?
Can you give to all of them?
Of course you can't. So often, you end up giving to none of them.
As an adult I try to justify this in my head by counting up the hours spent proof-reading and editing documents and brochures for charities, by the money collected and donated to those same organisations, by the awareness I try to spread within the expat community here of the need for their time and money.
But my sons don't see that. And since they don't come shopping with me, they don't see the apple or banana I hand to the 2 year old outside the supermarket as his mother (if she is his mother) pockets the dollar I just gave her and - more often than not - tells me that's not enough.
I know hand-outs are not the answer. Give the man (or woman) a fishing rod, not a single fish; that's what we're supposed to do. Deal with the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms. But I want to teach my children not to be hard-hearted and turn away from those in need. Giving to those who require help now, today, to make it through to tomorrow, does not make them a soft touch, a mug, an easy prospect; it simply makes them human.
So. I would really like to know. What do you tell your children about beggars?
