Editorial: Sincerity

On December 7, the UK-based Disasters Emergency Committee reported evidence suggesting that not all the £60 million of aid given by as many as 14 UK charity institutions reaches the intended beneficiaries in the typhoon-stricken regions. Reports also released on local mainstream media speak of foreign aid being left wasted by the roadsides or hoarded and left undistributed by local government officials at the ground level.

A donation is a free, sincere act wherein a party that can afford to give surrenders cash or assets for the welfare of another party, often with the intention of benefiting the receiving party. For donations to be toyed with by intermediaries destroys the essence of donating and of giving aid – indeed, it destroys the sincerity of giving.

This year, DLSU decided to forego its community Christmas party, choosing to appropriate the budget allocated for the party to the DLSU Relief and Rehabilitation Fund. Many other institutions around the country performed similar gestures to show their solidarity with the typhoon victims – but these shows of solidarity remain incomplete without the sincerity of real action. Businesses and corporations have taken advantage of the PR opportunities in the typhoon to prop up the social responsibility side of their respective businesses, without paying heed to the fundamental virtue of sincere capacity-building and developmental assistance.

This sincerity is something that does not occupy grand dimensions. This genuine sincerity can be reflected in the value that projects add to the equation of developmental assistance. Student units have been involved in relief drives, and there have been many student organizations trying to address the need for goods in the area.

Most constitute fund-raising activities, such as parties or sales, with the beneficiaries being “the victims of typhoon Yolanda.” But more limited are the student-run projects attacking the root causes of the tragedy – disaster education and preparedness, mitigation of climate change conditions. Much more dismal is the student participation in said events, if they did exist – the surfacing of an effective need-based project approval process is less analytical than it is procedural.

Similarly, the Yolanda victims are being perceived as merely a welcome avenue for organizations to seem heroic or sublime in their motivation, without exercising the due vigilance of those sincere enough to look after a donation even as it is with the hands of the intermediary. Many times it is not an issue of trust than it is an issue of implied apathy, or the lack of sincerity.

One of the hallmarks of sincerity would be giving only those goods that are actually usable and of value to the needy. Upon finding out that the courier service delivering goods to the disaster-stricken areas will be lifting the waiver on freight charges this December, the Center of Social Concern and Action immediately coordinated with the communities and tediously sieved through the queued donation piles and disposed of those that are not appropriate or could not be used in the site.

The number of unusable clothing amounted to too many piles of clothing that was of no value to the receiving communities – formal wear, tiny baby’s accessories, torn pants, unpaired shoes. To think of those donating as giving the communities the trash of their armoires is telling of the sincerity of those donating – or at least, their negligence.

As the year ends, Br. Michael Broughton FSC, Vice Chancellor for Lasallian Mission, told the Lasallian community during the Animo Christmas Mass: “We know that we have found Christmas in our hearts because we answered the needs of our brothers and sisters.” The question to ask is if this answering of needs sincere, and if the presence of sacrifice comes with the act of giving, for giving is, according to Mother Teresa, only true when it hurts, and matters.