Do you give money to beggars?
Last night I was out with some friends and I noticed a little girl selling roses on her own outside a club at 2am… I gave her 100B because I felt sorry for her, without taking a rose. My friend who I was with thought I was stupid for doing so as it encouraged her parents, who he said was watching her, to continue do make their daughter sell roses at times when the kid should be in bed. I could understand his point.
Then you have the old ladies with kids in their arms normally sitting on the bridges, I normally give small change to them as well. By doing so does this encourage them to continue begging? I have been told many times before that the ladies holding the babies are not their Mum’s and that the babies are bought over from Cambodia.
Here in Bangkok, we even have a foreigner that begs, sitting on a bridge asking for money to go home, although he has been begging for a long time. There is a video on youtube interviewing him, and its known that he makes more than what the average English teacher makes here. I have personally seen him myself, and wanted to punch him square on the nose, I think it’s disgusting what he is doing, knowing that he is depriving money from the Thai beggars.
Don’t get me wrong, I know begging is a world wide problem, but Bangkok has one of the worst, apart from India, begging problem I have ever seen. Most Thai’s do give money to Thai beggars, which I think is great. I also often see uni students collecting money for the Thai poor, which is great considering they have a lot on their plates. My girlfriend has a good system, she will buy products from very poor people selling things on the streets, even though she doesn’t need the crap she buys.
What’s your take on giving to beggars? Do you buy products from the poor even though you don’t need the stuff you are buying? Do you give money to beggars that put extra effort into begging such as playing a musical instrument? Do you give money to beggars that have dogs or kids with them out of pity? Do you give money to disabled people?
As you noted, there are a lot of beggars in India. I do not give money to begging children because this is indeed an organized scam that impacts children (sort of like the way prostitution works in these countries too). However, we do buy things from poor families on roadside stalls even when we don’t need them.
Hey I dont know if I would give to some begger on the street corner but I did just find a site and gave to someone their that needs a surgical procedure, so I dont know I guess it depends on the connection that you make with the person asking….:)