It's been 3 weeks of scouring through child sponsorship websites and I'm starting to feel weird about all this.
First, decision fatigue is numbing my altruistic impulses. Second, I feel, uncomfortably, a lot like a modeling agent searching for a poster child in the original sense of the noun phrase: a suitably ill/disabled child for a poster to inspire enough sympathy and hope for a charitable cause. Then there's a tangled mess of associations formed in my mind that roughly translate to "consumerism" & "commercialization."
I'd like to be able to give a child in need the support every child deserves. Hm. Correction. I am able to do so. So I should. Just a dollar a day and their basic needs would be covered. You can get to know these children, they could write to you and you to them. You could become someone in their life. You could offer a doorway out of generations of poverty, cycles of abuse, village mentalities and bleak futures. This is power. Plus, Heather Graham is sponsoring 5 children in Cambodia & loves it. I will never look quite as wide eyed and angelic as that woman, but hey, I can do a good celebrity-worthy deed.
As with all things you enter into Google, sponsoring a child became a dilemma. The New Internationalist in 1989 offered 9 reasons not to sponsor a child; I pit them here - in my own words - against Heather Graham's reasons. (I have nothing against Heather Graham; her reasons simply echo the most common ones to sponsor.) (Well. Scratch that. I still can't get over how bad Killing Me Softly was. I loved Joseph Fiennes.)
HG: "I think a lot about what women and children in developing countries have to deal with."
NI: (Reason 1) You could induce family rifts: between the haves and have nots, between men & women due to your upheaving of traditional societal roles, etc.
HG: "It's great for that child to know that someone who lives in another country cares about them."
NI: (Reason 2) Children may be used as political pawns. (Reason 7) You could generate a lot of discontent in children when they learn of the vast inequalities between your world and theirs. (Reason 4) Children could be faced with disorienting cultural confusion.
HG: "One of my major goals is to find ways to empower women in developing countries."
NI: (Reason 3) Sponsorship programs easily foster unhealthy & cyclical dependency instead of empowerment. This is both emotional (children are expected to show eternal gratitude) and physical ($$)
HG: "I think the major way to help them is education."
NI: (Reason 6) "Disappointed liberation": over-educating children, giving them skills incompatible with their local economy.
HG: "I love seeing photos of Elenie--she is such a wonderful person!"
NI: (Reason 9) Children of the developing world tend to be trapped in the image of poverty and cultural backwardness. Photos of dismal conditions & happy grinning kids "saved by the sponsor" portray the rest of the community as powerless at best and the culprit for the children's suffering at worst.
HG: "Sponsoring a child brings me a lot of joy. One child makes me want to sponsor more kids! That's why I sponsor Elenie. I love it!...Money spent toward sponsoring a kid rewards you in so many more ways than you would ever guess. Most of all it makes you feel really happy!"
NI: (Reason 8) Much less of the donated money goes to the child than you would expect. (Reason 5) A lot of the correspondence with your sponsored child is screened by the organization and designed to.. well, delight you.
The last comment of Graham's may have been phrased in poor taste but it is a rather accurate reflection of the thoughts that went through my head as I clicked through the children's profiles.
"Oh, she is precious.. Imagine what this little bit of money could get her through. Oh, I can see her future already - full of empowerment, giving back, youth leadership, transforming of dialogues, linkages, mobilized social capital and just dazzling. (Check out the NGO grant speak generator.) But wait! There's also Luis with the cheeky grin from Chile.. Pransasa of the sweetest dimples from Sri Lanka... Tiberiu with the bright eyes from Romania.. Mabore with the determined, fiery gaze from Lesotho.. Esau the-one-who-will-prove-them-wrong, Tuyisenge the-defender, Phean the-poet...My heart..."
There's a massive disconnect between the lives of these children and our world of ideals - how we idealize the children and how we idealize our contribution. This isn't an excuse to become a scrooge but this problem isn't new either. Children becoming political pawns: this is paralleled by the rush of aid into democracy building programs as part of the global "war on terror"; money not reaching kids: phantom aid; "disappointed liberation": "disappointing liberalism"; dependency: old news, and it goes on. Flooding kids with sponsorship works very much like smothering countries with aid.
That said, I'm still going to sponsor a child. Part of me just wants this experience to decide for myself how well this model works, and part of me wants to take the easy way out and keep believing in the big aid machine, in this black box that somehow, somehow, will do the job. Maybe a girl in Thailand so I could visit during my internship there?
But oh, I don't have the heart to say no to Luis!
------------------------------------------------------
