A guy in my grade is organizing a schoolwide service project. We're all supposed to donate money and he'll send it to contacts of his in Thailand, who work at a school that was damaged by the tsunami a couple years ago. The idea is, and I'm very serious, that our money goes to buying snacks for some orphans who don't get any allowance.
It's not that they're hungry. Oh, no. They get curry and rice, three meals a day. It's just that they have to watch as the kids who still have their parents buy treats for themselves, while the poor orphans are stuck with their plates full of the same old food.
Is it insensitive of me to find the initiative laughable?
4 comments:
That's pretty crazy. It reminds me of beggars in the US vs. beggars in Ecuador. In Ecuador they would flock around asking for a penny or centavo. In the US, I was frequently accosted by this guy who would say, "Could you buy me a Big Mac?"
I laughed too. My children had parents, but never got an allowance. I wonder if they would have qualified?
Coleen, you are exactly right. I can't figure out why they assume that the children with parents are getting extra money to spend on treats at school. Says a lot more about the donor's assumptions than about reality.
why do I feel as if we have discussed these very points? I still think that a European cuisine is much more suitable to this issue. I mean, duh, cultural diversity and int'l cooperation. Isn't that what were all about?
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