In my last blog I made a layman’s attempt at describing ‘desperation’ as perceived through the eyes of a working mother in the Solomon Islands who lost her children and father during the recent flash flooding of the Matanko [Matanikau] River, in Honiara, on April 4, 2014.
I also made an attempt, albeit feeble, to excite the inherent benevolent characteristic that may lay dormant in some of you. Let’s face it some people lack compassion; so much so, that regardless of how you approach them they will not give in any way, shape, or form!
As an extension of that discussion I will try to address the concept of giving in terms of the people that give.
Giving is defined as ‘parting with something without expecting anything in return’.
On the onset I will make an empirical categorisation of the different kinds of givers that I see and will address each one in the next series of blogs that I will be writing. All with the aim of trying to drum up financial support for the victims of the said flash flooding and general flooding right around the island of Guadalcanal, a province of the Solomon Islands.
You already know that the monies that the governments of developed countries-donor countries- around the world give or donate to developing countries come from the pockets of their citizens. In fact according to http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm, industrialised countries around the globe have pledged, since 1970, 0.7% of their gross national incomes (GNI). GNI is a measure of any country’s income that it receives both domestically and from abroad.
The monies the industrialised countries give, are formally called ‘official development assistance’ (ODA), and range from 0.13% of GNI (Greece) to as high as 1.00% of GNI (Luxembourg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governments_by_development_aid). The main countries that officially assist the pacific region include Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Their percentages are 0.28%, 0.28% and 0.17% respectively (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_governments_by_development_aid) . To them the citizens of the Pacific region at large and Solomon Islands specifically will be forever grateful!
However, I am not interested in the big picture I am more interested in the citizens who give to enable their governments to give in return. They make up the first category of givers for purposes of this discussion; those who give because they are obligated to. They are analogous to rivers that flow incessantly down to the sea. More of them in the next blog!
You may not fall under this category but your assistance is still very much needed by the victims of the April 4, 2014 floods in the Solomon Islands. Will you help? Click on the link below to do so.
https://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser-widget.aspx?frid=165377
Third world man 