Does it bother anyone besides me that everyone is so hyped up about 'help tsunami victims' and stuff? I'm not saying I don't care, but there are people in our own communities that need help.

There is no shelter in my own town, but the adjacent one has two or three, and a lot of homeless people who don't even know they exist. They need help, too!

Gather up decent things to give them. They always need old books, blankets, cheap toys... If everybody focuses on foreign nations, our own colleagues will suffer.

I don't know about not giving aide to disaster victims, but it always strikes me as wrong when people pay a fortune (oftentimes thousands of dollars) to travel to another country to do service. Why not donate the money to a worthwhile organization (instead of supporting NW airlines with the purcahsee of your plane ticket) and help the families suffering in your own backyard? Just a thought...I never went on my youth group's mission trips to Appalachia where they would like redo the siding on people's houses, I would just make ann effort while they were gone to serve my local community.

I agree that you need to help out locally too, but who's going to help the disaster victims if people only help out people in their own towns? How are the victims supposed to get help then? Everybody in their towns are wiped out too!

i would agree with nucl. but its a very fine line to be able to help others ,say, in your community and in forign countries. But you cant always help everyone..thats never going to happen.

yeah, it can seem hypocritical to gather funds and such for people who need it far, fra, far way without looking at the problems that exist around us- in ur own communities.
but i don't think the tsunami stuff is that hyped up. these people really need help, as do Katrina victims, and helping them is almost a community service fad: everyone helps one cause or another for a short while.. and then stops.,..
we all need to help and do what we can do locally, as well as keeping a global perspective on things in mind.

Good job Amp and reallynow, that's great. Keep it up. I want to work in a soup kitchen as well, though it seems there are none in my town, I'd have to work on a town close to here.

I know exactly what you're saying. There are no actual shelters in my town and it's a pretty big place, they don't even do anything at christmas.

There's this writer, Rahnema

he writes about this philosophy of "embracing our individual powerlessness" He basically says that the only way we can make any change is by accepting that we can't change everything.
(Quoting from memory here, so I could be off a bit...) "We give money to the victims of AIDS in Africa, we have no knowledge of where the money goes, what it does. It's like administering asprin to third degree burn victims. We do it not out of love, but out of a feeling of guilt if we don't"

idk, I think he's pretty much a genius and I basically love his books and his philosophy. Reading this thread made me think of that. He would agree that we should try and each solve our own local issues.

i do think that it can be a little accessive to concentrate all of our aid on one disaster. we do, however, need to realize that, we are a superpower. we have the moral responsibility to help other countries when they are in need. we have enough resources that if some of them were sent overseas to provide aid to other countries, and some were held here to help the poor and suffering in our own country, i think we'd have enough to go around.

Well, i don't mean to throw a damper on your good will, but i think that if ppl are helping, let them. Whether locally or not, help is help, and if a peron decides to give it when it is needed, then let them.

LIVE AND LET LIVE, THINK ABOUT I: MAYBE SOMEONE FROM FAR AWAY WILL BE WANTING TO HELP THE PPL IN YOUR AREA AS WELL.

I work at my kitchen as well passing,cooking and delvering food to the homeless and helpless.

I work at my soup kitchen and donate to katrina funds and tsunami and pakistan quake funds

"Think globally, act locally," essentially. Yes, it bothers me as well, but still I participate in and organise drives and such for tsunami victims and hurricane victims.