Reply #9: Well, not sure I can agree with that fully [View All]

[The Straight Story]

Watching TV at night you see commercials for kids dying all over the world starving and folks pleading for financial help (christian org I cannot remember the name of I have seen many commercials from).

People ARE aware of the problems, they just don't see it as hitting home usually. The most they can do is send money, but they prefer (sadly) to gossip more about things relating to this country (as this is where they live and see it as being more relevant).

Sides try to manipulate people using kids (iraq/kuwait incubators, etc and so on) to get backing for their actions because kids are a sore point.

Which brings us to a problem. If we tell people they, as americans, are the reason these kids are dying and suffering they want to ignore it and not believe it. Blame someone for the problems of kids across the world and they kick in the defense mechanism (again, go back to the commercials I refer to, like adopt a kid, they don't blame, they present an issue and a solution and ask for help in implementing that solution - guilt free,unless you don't help....).

News like Jon Benet don't bring up guilt, but fascination. A mystery, no guilt, rich people getting theirs (ie, just cause you are rich does not mean you can escape the violence in US - and if you think it is so bad, why aren't you helping all the other folks here, etc), etc.

If we want to help kids the world over I would say the best method is to do so without always involving the government and working on private solutions where we can raise money and get out the messsage.

A church I went to as a teen had missionaries in third world countries and regularly raised money to help the villages they were in - and people helped a lot. Food, education, potable water, and so on. They got things done faster than the govt did (not saying we should not use the govt to help them, we should!)

This brings me to spreading the gospel: Folks do this well without a lot of dollars (ie, door to door ministries type of thing). We can help kids all over by empowering ourselves and saying screw the news stations who don't think it is worthy of their time (and even then, when they give it time - they don't tell how people can help. Folks need to see a problem defined and a solution given with how they can contribute to that solution).