Ever Thought About Sponsoring A Poor Family?

[DragonQuest]

The country should be responsible for these kind of peolpe, just like in America, UK or Japan.

[jaideeguy]

Whatever you do, DON'T give them money!! If you gave them the 4kbhatt/mo as you suggested in your OP, it would be gone in a couple of days at the most. They are poor money managers and i speak from my experience of supporting my Thai extended family. at first, I sent them a monthly, then found out that moma was gambling it and papa was drinking it and then drew the line when moma dreamed up a 'medical' emergency that i later found out was to pay off gambling debts.

Now i send bhatt at holidays, birthdays and starting of school. By the way, the extended family is not only moma and papa, but a lazy sister with two kids as well.

one experiment that i did to help them with something self substainable was to sponsor a small pigery and that is doing ok .....now the 2nd generation of pigs are being raised and that is the direction that i think i'll go in for the future.

[PaulUSA302]

Thanks everyone! A lot of good suggestions and Ideas. I would have never thought of buying school uniforms and a lot of the direct giving of cash warnings seems to make sense and I think are valid arguments.

Anyone know the cost of the brown shoes the school kids wear? I think I may donate some shoes to some kids on my next trip.

(Off Topic... I remember when my sister came to visit us with her well behaved and well mannered children. They were very respectful, thoughtful and humble.... These sweet southern raised and religious children met their Northern USA living uncles, aunts and cousins... We were able to corrupt them in 1 day! Day 2 their mother was able to bring them back to their senses by asking them how valuable are the things they now have that was given or bought for them? Their answers warmed our hearts... "I value God and my family mom, these are just THINGS." And before they left, they gave away much of what was given to them to their cousins. I hears one of my niece's tell her Cousin; "Aunt Jackie (short for Jacqueline) gave this to me but I want you to have it."

When they were gone we felt so bad on how we almost corrupted the very thing that we liked the most about the children.... Their Values..... )

[howtoescape]

Here in the USA when I see a person asking for money.... Well.. They are bums! We have far too-many programs to help the homeless!

Maybe some people need more then money, or is this just a quick fix to make you feel good.

Youre like the male Madonna who was quite happy to ignore the parentless and abused kids in England, the country that offers her a home for a crusade to save the impoverished of the planet, whilst gaining maximum publicity about how wonderful she is.

<deleted> the orphans and homeless of the Western world they have too-many programs.

Edited December 31, 2007 by howtoescape

[skipvice]

Here in the USA when I see a person asking for money.... Well.. They are bums! We have far too-many programs to help the homeless!

Maybe some people need more then money, or is this just a quick fix to make you feel good.

Youre like the male Madonna who was quite happy to ignore the parentless and abused kids in England, the country that offers her a home for a crusade to save the impoverished of the planet.

<deleted> the orphans and homeless of the Western world they have too-many programs.

wow what a nice person your are. som num na

[howtoescape]

wow what a nice person your are. som num na

At least i am aware of poverty closer to home.

[PaulUSA302]

wow what a nice person your are. som num na

At least i am aware of poverty closer to home.

There are also places of employment closer to my house, but I choose to drive past them and go to a employer where I can be the most effective.

You don't know me... Just because I say I don't give money to the beggar's here in Delaware does not mean that I am not Charitable. You don't know if I have Salvation Army donations deducted from my pay. You don't know if I give of myself. I would not tell you if I did because I want to talk about things THAI. Not about "ME" because I am the expert on me....

Your words seem angry. That is too bad.

[flyer]

Paul,

How you react is typical and very much the reason why ppl should travel and see the world. Travelling changes you and makes you (most often) a better person. All those junkies and criminals in our rich countries should be put on a travel plan to Asia or Africa to see what you saw ... and even much more. I think the ones you saw and felt bad about are still quite ok if the kids had clean school uniforms. Many don't have ... and don't go to school coz the parents can't afford.

Now back to your topic. I have long years of experience with helping poor families. I concentrate on some countries which i know well because i can better focus on what is really needed. Helping a family directly with money is always, as far as i have found out, a bad solution. Not because the ppl you will help are bad, but because the infrastructures in poor countries are inexistant or inaccessible (for them) in some way. So how to help? by offering infrastructure access to them, and that you cannot do from abroad. You have to be there and do it. Besides you will spend much less money for a lot more result. One example: make sure that the children of a poor family get proper education. Otherwise they will land in the same condition as their parents, once they are grown up. In BKK you can go to any catholic church and talk to the priest there. They all have a voluntary organisation for children of poor families. In Philippines (that is a lot worse then Thailand) , there is the World Mission Foundation that does just the same, but backed by the reformatory church (protestant). Those organisations do spend 100% of the donations money to help the poor. Not any one $ is kept behind hand for overhead or other things. Those working are voluntary (free) or church members (priests). For example with 30 $ per month, you can support a child to have proper education, a school uniform, one meal a day and school material... That goes a lot longer way then giving 100 $ a month to the family. I don't give any websites here because i would not like to favorize one organisation more then others i don't know. But i can post a few photo's of some families i visited, so you can compare with what you saw when travelling.

You can always PM me if you like.

Best wishes,

Flyer.

[Heng]

IMO the most important component of "sponsoring" those who are poor is offering them employment. Giving someone a free lunch is one of the best ways to ensure that they never learn anything other than how to look for a free lunch.

I do admit though that I often can't resist outright donations of goods (I generally won't donate cash) to charities. It's easy and much more low impact than actually building a business for folks to work for. Donate - feel good - back to my life, like most people do.

[torrenova]

I did all the preparatory work for a business which I cannot run but which I was prepared to set up and which would have provided employment for 2 male members of the family and extended family and they could not be bothered to get off their <deleted>. Without going into detail, it was a semi manual job for about 4 to 5 hours a day which would have given them at least 8k per month with the prospect of as much as 15k per month each.

Lazy buggers thought it was too much like hard work so I told them to f- off and never, never ask me directly or indirectly (say by borrowing from someone else in the family) for any assistance. Go starve to death for all I care, but they won't because the stupid women in the family will feed them and still give them whatever they have for booze.

One brother is 50/50 and I hope he might take up the idea I have on his own on a smaller scale to start.

[Heng]

Yeah, I meant employment as in something like learning labor type jobs, then semi skilled, then semi skilled with a little more pay, baby steps. Not setting up a turn key operation (that they had no part in raising the capital to invest in) and turning them loose.

[torrenova]

Yeah, I meant employment as in something like learning labor type jobs, then semi skilled, then semi skilled with a little more pay, baby steps. Not setting up a turn key operation (that they had no part in raising the capital to invest in) and turning them loose.

The job does require some brain input and I would have been happy for them to buy into the business over time instead of taking their incentive payments in cash.

The problem is that unless they are not working now, getting them to do any training means a loss of income which has to be replaced. They currently don't have the complete skill set required to do what I want them to do but like you say, slowly, in small steps, hoping that they can learn how income is generated through greater volumes and more sales etc.

You would be amazed how many Thais think sales = profits, completely dismissing all other costs including the cost of the items they have just sold ! Now I don't think I had to learn that concept, it is just obvious but then so is the idea behind the fable of the man who killed the golden goose. And I have a money tree in the back garden.

[Scott]

Unless it is a family that you know reasonably well and know what the money is for, I would stick to giving it to a charity to help the poor. In spite of what has been written, most charities follow tight rules about what percentage of their income goes directly to causes and what % to administration (in general, admin costs should be 10% or less).

These folks are good at targeting the most needy or the group that they have decided to help, thus your money goes for what you want it to, whether it be medical, school, housing etc. etc.

Your heart is in the right place and best of luck to you.

[blizzard]

sales does equal profits when someone hands over a biznit to you.........lol.

no offense to the buznit buying farangs out there. we know you tryoing to do well............lol.

[Heng]

You would be amazed how many Thais think sales = profits, completely dismissing all other costs including the cost of the items they have just sold ! Now I don't think I had to learn that concept, it is just obvious but then so is the idea behind the fable of the man who killed the golden goose. And I have a money tree in the back garden.

I think you'll find that there are millions of Thais (and yes, hundreds of them actually aren't Thai Chinese) who actually run successful business don't think sales = profits. It'll certainly seem hat way though if you take Thais who are nth generation non-business folks/farmers and try to throw them into the business world.

[legag]

Never thought of sponsoring anyone as long as they've got good two hands and foot.

One of the problems they have is, let's say, they make a 100 but spend as a 1000!!

[torrenova]

You would be amazed how many Thais think sales = profits, completely dismissing all other costs including the cost of the items they have just sold ! Now I don't think I had to learn that concept, it is just obvious but then so is the idea behind the fable of the man who killed the golden goose. And I have a money tree in the back garden.

I think you'll find that there are millions of Thais (and yes, hundreds of them actually aren't Thai Chinese) who actually run successful business don't think sales = profits. It'll certainly seem hat way though if you take Thais who are nth generation non-business folks/farmers and try to throw them into the business world.

Agreed in general but even farmers have to understand that the cost of what they plant, plus the cost until harvest must be lower than the price they can achieve at market or they go bust.

It just beggars belief that the simplistic A-B must be greater than 0 fails to compute !