J
Joel Shepherd
I'm sorry, but that's bullshit.
It is a complete falsehood to suggest that charitable giving stops cold
between disasters. In the neighborhood I live in, I can't throw a rock
without hitting the front door of a charitable or non-profit
organization, most of whom are focused on providing services locally.
Those organizations would not continue on for year after year after year
if they did not have a decent revenue stream coming in, much of which
comes from some of the same people who are donating to help the tsunami
victims.
Now, those organizations and their efforts may not get the same level of
publicity as the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, etc., but they
_are_ helping. Just because you've never heard of them doesn't mean they
don't exist and aren't effective.
Do major disasters stir up a sharp rise in giving? Sure. I suspect one
reason is the perception that the problems caused by natural disasters
are actually fixable with sufficient funding. Putting food in bellies,
putting up shelter, rebuilding: those are obvious, concrete actions
which will repair much of the physical damage.
Problems like AIDs, homelessness, civil war, etc., are much more
intractable. It's not just a matter of giving away condoms, building
cheap housing, etc.: it's about dealing with social mores, child abuse
and neglect, addictions, *history*, etc. Those aren't things you can
easily fix by throwing more money at them. Money helps, but the
perception and the truth is that those problems need more than money to
fix. So some people don't give to support those efforts, and some people
support them by other means.
But again, just because they're not making the headlines, that doesn't
mean nothing is happening.