(Photo used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of Flickr user Dey)
I’ve recently been asked by several people, including team members at Acumen Fund, whether or not one should give to a beggar. The question has weighed even more heavily this week in India, where beggars have knocked on my car’s window daily. Ultimately, I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
Indeed, Acumen Fund’s entire mission is based on principles of dignity and freedom; we work to build systems that enable individuals to access affordable, quality services so that they can make their own decisions and choices. Our deepest philosophy rejects systems that insist only on hand-outs, and yet, we also have learned that sometimes hand-outs are indeed necessary, especially when people are barely surviving.
But too many no’s make a stone of the heart, and some level of inconsistency may be what makes us most interesting and even beautiful as human beings. There are times to give alms, a time just to give a few dollars to a person standing in front of you because he so clearly needs it right there in that moment. There are certainly times to give your coat on a cold night.
Rather than endlessly debate this paradox, our shared goal should be asking ourselves daily what we are doing to help create a world in which all human beings really are treated as equal, a world in which dignity trumps charity, a world in which giving becomes mostly about solving problems while also celebrating small kindnesses daily – as long as they are about the other person and not about yourself.