Before I left for Peace Corps, a friend's mom told me that she wanted to help in any way she could. She was hesitant to just donate funds directly to organizations because she never knew if the gift actually made it to the people she wanted to help or got lost to others along the way.
I often do not believe in first world countries just providing monetary aid to third world countries as this creates a sense of dependency. For example, just the fact that I'm a foreigner, people will assume that I am rich and will ask me for money because they've seen so much financing going towards the country. After two years; however, I found a very sweet man that was deserving of such a small gift without expectations.
Zachary and his new farm
After two years, I had made a very good (and honest) friend named Zachary. I won't go too much into detail about Zachary's story, but know that he was fired from his job for unjustified reasons and was the sole provider for a sick wife and three children. He worked to get his life back together by renting farm land and a simple donation allowed him to buy a starter pack of fertilizer for his farm. See below to see what $60 can do (and an embarrassing video of me losing my shoe):
Did the shoe ever turn up!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately no! I went shoeless for the rest of the trip, but hey, it's a good story, no?
ReplyDeleteYes! And great that is was caught on video, hopefully you did not step on any sharp rocks.
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