Doing Good Better

The world of philanthropy is surprisingly complex. I've learned this through my 10 years as a donor to Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, but particularly over the last three years volunteering for Blue Dragon as a fundraiser. 

Who donates what, where and why is fascinating. Our donation decisions reflect our value judgements and our views about our responsibility to others. Should I care more about people in my own community or about all people everywhere equally? Should I focus more on political change or on individuals most in need? How do I know that a charity is using my donation to best effect? 

These are some of the questions asked by William MacAskill a decade ago when he started the "effective altruism" movement. His book Doing Good Better explores how we can get the most value for a donation dollar.

I'll start by saying I'm not in complete agreement with MacAskill. But I do think the questions he asks and his attempt to be deliberate and disciplined in providing answers, are admirable. I recommend his book Doing Good Better to anyone thinking harder about making a difference.

It's through the lens of "effective altruism" that I've been thinking about Blue Dragon and why I donate my time and money. 

And what it boils down to is that for Blue Dragon there are no "or"s. Blue Dragon doesn't make choices between helping individuals "or" changing systems. It doesn't make choices between rescuing trafficking victims "or" protecting those who are vulnerable. 

This was particularly clear to me last week as I sat in awe watching one of our program managers hosting a monthly Community Based Case Management meeting. The meeting was in a small village, high in the mountainous remote northwest of Vietnam. Present were the regional head of the government department of social services and representatives of the Women's Unions from surrounding villages. Each woman told a story about a child in their village who needed support. Together, the government social workers, the Women's Union members, and Blue Dragon's staff worked through what resources were needed and how best to support these children. The objective of the meeting was to help kids in need, but also to facilitate collaboration between agencies and build strength in the community. 

Blue Dragon acts where it can, responding to opportunities as they arise: rescuing victims of trafficking and providing them with the support they need for as long as they need it; working to understand what made a person vulnerable to trafficking and working in the local community to build strength and resilience to protect others. This is what I admire about Blue Dragon, a genuine desire to make things better and the courage, skills and imagination to find opportunities and make change. 

Philanthropy is complex, with so many options and possibilities. But at its core, I think it's simple: look for opportunities to make a difference, and when they arise, take them. As individuals, we can't do everything but we can do something. I think we have a responsibility to read a little, learn a bit, understand what we can and, just like Blue Dragon, act when the opportunities arise.

Images of Uncle Ho

 

I met a tiger up in the hills. He looked at me:
I looked at him. We went our separate ways.
But on the open road, where I thought I was safe

It was human beings who captured me.

Ho Chi Minh. Prison Diaries. 1942-1943 (Translated by Timothy Allen)

Captured by Chinese Nationalists 

Ho Chi Minh wrote prison diaries in verse

To show and hide his thoughts

Clarity is the enemy 

In the eyes of the law

 

But metaphor hints at meanings

That serve myth and vision

Capturing legends

And the foundations of a nation

In the image of Uncle Ho 

I visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum in Hanoi today. The museum is the message (to rephrase Marshall McLuhan's famous line). Propaganda is like body odour: we don't notice our own but the smell of others can be quite confronting. The spirit of HCM is immortalised in the museum; the body is chemically preserved in the next building over. I didn't bother with the hours-long queue to see the physical remains. The less popular spiritual remains were, to my mind, much more interesting and, as it turned out, inspiring.

 

 

Orwell's Roses. Rebecca Solnit

 

Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is many things, but what I think is at its centre is a thesis about beauty. Solnit uses the cultural legacy of Orwell to explore how we find dignity and purpose in our political selves. Her idea is that we can find in Orwell's writing more than just dystopia; there are also moments of beauty and compassion. To avoid the tendency to fascism, we need a richer reading of the world. A reading that looks one way to stare fascism in the face, and then the other, to find beauty and truth.

Near the middle of the book, Solnit quotes Hannah Arendt: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist." Whilst Solnit quite deliberately has little specific to say about the present state of the political world, her writing is a perfect foundation for addressing so much of it. What I took most from the book was the need to do the hard work necessary to build better worlds. There's an urgent need to resist the laziness of leaders and the media who say what is easy and expedient. Instead, we need to take the time to explore complexity, reach compromises, and add beauty to the world.

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Building bridges

Sometimes first impressions can be mistaken. Yesterday I taught my second English lesson to a group of teenagers at Blue Dragon Children's Foundation in Vietnam. Two of the keener students arrived early and chatted happily in Vietnamese before a boy I didn't know came into the room. They argued. The new boy looking intimidating with a tattoo and angry face. When he left, I asked if my two students were OK and they smiled and shrugged it off. 

The rest of the students arrived and the lesson started. We sat in a circle on a carpet and I used a pile of lego to introduce the English colours. Working in pairs, the learning task was to make a bridge out of lego saying the number and colour of blocks as they took them from the pile: "two red, four green" etc. The finished bridges needed to be big and strong enough to cross a piece of A4 paper.

At this stage the angry boy with the tattoo came back into the room. He came around the circle and sat close beside me. I handed him some lego and watched as he tentatively tried to put them together. I showed him how to pull blocks apart and he experimented and grew in confidence as he discovered how the lego worked. I tried a few English words for numbers and colours but he didn't engage. So I started building a bridge. One block at a time I made a base and a series of steps and my newest student copied the process to build his side of the structure. When each of our sides was big enough, we joined them with a final block and added our bridge to the others spanning a piece of paper. He turned to me and smiled.

Only today did the rather blatant symbolism of the task occur to me. The bridge I hope I built was one that takes a young boy from insecurity to a little more confidence. A bridge that makes him feel more accepted and confident. A bridge that builds his humanity. That's the bridge he built for me.

Digging

(in homage to Seamus Heaney) 

How has it taken

Fifty four years 

To learn the difference 

Between a spade 

And a shovel?

Spades I’ve had many,

But the shovel is recent.

Inherited from my 

Father-in-law who

Knew his tools.

He owned two scythes,

The blades brought back

As hand luggage from 

Austria in the days 

When that was possible.

Despite owning a slasher,

He still cut grass

With the Scythe. 

Said the cows liked it better

Untainted by fumes.

Sweeping in great arcs

He showed me

How the blade was angled, 

Just so, to catch 

The grass along its edge:

“To Slice, not Chop.”

Precise words to 

Describe an action

Honed as keen

As the blade.

Pausing often

To run the whet stone 

Over the edge,

He told me the secret

To a good blade:

“Have just the right compromise 

Between Hardness and Flexibility.”

Too hard and the blade will snap;

Too soft and you won’t 

Get a fine cutting edge.

In Austria, he said,

A good scythe was 

A treasured thing.

Before it wore down

It was taken to the Blacksmith

Who would twang it with 

A finger, listening 

To the vibrations

And transfer the same note 

To a new blade: 

Just hard enough to cut well;

Not so hard as to be brittle.

Each new blade a song 

Going back generations -

Singing the instrument 

To its perfect shape.

…

In my garden 

The shovel is a revelation

The back-breaking 

Spade work transformed 

Into something elegant and precise;

A measured economy of 

Movement that has

A rhythm like poetry. 

The length 

Of the handle

Teaching me to bend

And use my legs, 

Hands positioned to

Make the most of 

The angle of the blade.

Bend, slice, lever

Lift, thrust, flick

And the motion

Repeats drawing me

Into a reverie 

And memories of 

My uncle in Shetland

Showing me the peat bog

Where he cut slabs 

Of peat for the winter.

The tools looking 

Like crazed creations

From a lunatic blacksmith

But having, in fact,

A form perfect for their function.

Nick, slice, lever, 

Lift, thrust and pile

The sods on the bank

Where they dry to provide heat 

Through the winter.

On the hill nearby 

Are the marks of peat lines

That contour down, 

Fading as the new 

Heather heals the scars.

Each line another chapter 

In the story of generations

That dig this hill,

Bottom to top in a 

Rhythm that marks millennia.

…

My driveway is quickly finished.

A couple of days enough 

For it to look like new

And for me to discover

This tool that teaches me

Who I am.

Playing With Fire

Words lick at the air 

Igniting a reaction - 

Fuel to heat, 

Comfort or pain, 

Tongues that dance 

Probing the ear, 

Fingers that itch 

To touch forbidden fruit. 

Risking the moment 

We steal from the gods 

This ember of meaning.

Breathe gently upon it 

And watch it glow.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What made my reading of this book so interesting was that I was given my copy by my friend Pete who is an engineer. Every Friday night Pete and I ride our pushbikes 25 kms around the east side of Singapore, drink a beer or two and ride back again. We talk: Pete about engineering, me about teaching and the books I read. One Friday Pete passed me a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and said he'd always wanted to read it; he'd bought two copies and we could read and chat about it each week. Thus began a remarkable bookclub.

What Pete loved and helped me to see better was the idea of an engineering problem as holistic. When things go wrong you can treat the symptom or you can think more holistically to understand the nature of the system. But, as Zen and the Art explains, the engineering systems we engage with also include the user as an integral element and so the problem is always more than just physics. The relationships between humans and the world we shape are reciprocal and complex and engineering is art as well as science.

That's the easy bit. Prisig then goes into an exploration of how the reification of the mechanical world seeps into the management of education and the human sciences. Somewhere around the last third of the book my understanding began to waver and Pete's company recalled him to the US. I'm not sure what we would or could have made of this last section. I'm not even sure whether Pirsig knows. At some point, it seems to me, all great writing reaches the limits of what can be said. Pirsig pushes those limits leaving me grateful for what I have understood, and a little in awe of what I have not.

I highly recommend the book, bike-riding book clubs, and clever people who see the world differently to you.

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