CHARITY

I'm sure you've seen them on TV? They're the ads for feeding some starving child in some 3rd world country. I am 72 years old and I have been hearing this call for money for the starving children since I was a hungry child in the depression years. I thought little of it until one day I combined this ad with a peculiar hobby of mine; simple math problems.

Now, I'm not very good at math per se. However I like fiddling with it. I started to do the math on this. I went to the phone books for the greater Vancouver area where I come from (Canada) and added up all (or most) of the Church's in my city. Now this did not include all the small ones just the large ones. Nor did it include all the churches in my Province of BC or all the cities and small towns and villages. Only those in the city of Vancouver. There are at least 10 cities across Canada that are almost as large or larger. So here we go:

There were 472 major churches.=472 If they collect only $2.00 per week in their cans=472x$2 =$944.00 And there are 4 weeks in a month,= 3,976.00 And there are 12 months in a year,=12 X 3,976=$47,712 $47,712. And there are 10 cities with 0ver472 churches x10 ____ $477,120. That is almost half a million dollars! And that is only $2 a week per church! And that's only in one year! This has been going on for 50 years of my life.

In one year they can collect enough to rebuild a dozen villages, pipe water in, put in electricity and let the people feed themselves. Not just for today but for years. And if they used the people for the labour and taught them then they are giving them pride and wages instead of bringing in outsiders And remember this---America has far more churches than Canada! And there is England, and Europe who also collect money. Where does it all go? How much do they really send? Who gets what?

And that my friends was only for one of the cans I saw in this particular church! There were others scattered about the church collecting for other things. What really blew my mind was thinking about the math involved in doing the American churches. They have far more cities and churches. They could buy a country with their amount.

I don't mean to belittle the efforts to feed children who are hungry, but face it, we aren't saving them. This money should have a better accounting than it has at present and over the years. And the cure isn't in giving money to the governments of these countries as we learnt the hard way in the Philippines. Instead why don't we build them water systems? The earth is becoming overcrowded and we are going to see far more starvation in backward countries unless we face the fact that we cannot let warlords and greedy leaders run these countries. As long as there is land that is not producing food because of wars the people will die. And as long as we keep sending huge shipments of grain and food to countries that do not have the warehouses to stock it or the trucks to deliver it to places that haven't any roads to drive over we are wasting our money. Our governments actually know that the food doesn't get to the people but is used by the leaders to make themselves wealthy. It is seen by the world as a nice gesture and appeases the masses. Look, they say, we have done something nice!

Isn't it time we asked an accounting? Is your money being used judiciously? Do you really care? Is there something we can do to improve the system so the children GET food? It seems to me that all we are doing is creating a dependency. It hasn't worked for our welfare recipients and it won't work for any other country. Wouldn't it be better if all the church's got together and did just one village a year and get it fixed up with water and schools and roads? Think of the Changes! Think of the money to be spent.

And if my math is wrong. Please correct me!