Five books to guide you to be more charitable

Kindness is taking a back seat in the new modern world we now occupy. People are more self-entitled, less charitable, more hurtful and less endearing in the main. Words often come out of people’s mouths these days which are hurled at innocent people before the speaker has even thought about it. Teachers tell children the most abhorrent things, children do not measure their words when they address their parents and spouses are often at each other’s throats because one person as they say in pidgin “no sabi” talk. It is getting increasingly difficult to be kind in the face of extremely difficult circumstances.

Homes are no longer safe for children and work places are increasingly becoming battlegrounds. I can only take a guess at what is going on. New influences, television without boundaries, dangerous and unwholesome TV and other media content, hate speech all over the place especially on the internet and the quick money syndrome allowing us to bury whole human beings alive just because they stood in our way of making illegal and illicit money.

This week, I was privileged to facilitate at a Macarthur foundation supported initiative on anti-corruption organised by Lux Terra leadership foundation for faith leaders in Abuja.

My topic was “Managing modern influences and influencers: The media in focus. It was a topic that had been offered to nearly 300 religious leaders, Muslims and Christians in the last one year. Offered in tranches of 45 or so participants at a time, this was the sixth cycle. It is expected to yield results by encouraging Faith leaders to do their bit in the fight against corruption. After much had been discussed about how the media fuels corruption both on-line and in the traditional space, faith leaders and facilitator made recommendations to include intensifying positive family values, preaching against hate speech, promoting positive role models and leading by example. It is always a teaching and learning experience for me. During the interactive session which was very robust, one participant made a profound comment. He said our new ways are majorly the way they are because people now lack a very important quality which was more prevalent in the past…the fear of God. He concludes that when people have no fear of God, they can do the most terrible things and steal or defame or take what is not theirs or be uncharitable and simply deny others their due with impunity. It was a defining moment.

It is lent, the season of giving and soon we enter Ramadan another season for being charitable. All the good books remind us that giving has the purest exceptional feeling that makes us better and helps us to touch other people’s lives in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. Take the IDP camps for example. There are too many broken children. Take orphanage homes. Sometimes charity is beyond physical things. Just comfort, a visit, a kind word in your office. People are hurting in different ways. Are you offering kindness or are you the one causing other people grief? How often do you shed your wardrobe? How many bags of rice can you eat? How greedy have you been this past year? Let us all try to be more charitable in words and in deed to make the world a better place. Here are five books to help us all this season.

1. Mother Theresa, Albanian catholic nun and Nobel peace prize winner for her work in charity lived a Spartan and exemplary life. Having started the Mission of charity and with her team of nuns attending the most vulnerable, the poorest of the poor and the dying, Mother Theresa lived her life for others. In the book, Something beautiful for God, Malcolm Muggeridge captures her essence. Get any book written by her or about her and learn some lessons in selfless giving.

2. The Blue Sweater, bridging the gap between the rich and the poor in an interconnected world written by Jaqueline Novogratz, is a special kind of book on charity. Leaving a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty, she finds powerful new ways to tackle it. In all of this, a blue sweater defines her life’s work. Given to her as a prized gift, she gives out her cherished sweater when she had outgrown it and then finds it on a young boy eleven years later in Rwanda with her name tag still on it. Her sweater had trekked all the way to Rwanda and this tells her how interconnected we are. She says our actions and inactions touch people every day to include people we never meet or know.

3. Any book on the African culture and tradition of giving. We have always been our brother’s keepers but these days we are more modern than the owners of the modern culture and have lost our traditional ways of giving. Let us give more, let us be kinder with our words, let us be less selfish, more selfless, more in tune with the needs of our society.

4. A kid’s guide to giving, by Freddie Zeiler and Ward Schumaker. This is a book written by kids for kids encouraging donations, charity and giving. Teach your children the way to go and they will not depart from it, the bible says. How many of us take our children to orphanage homes so they learn how privileged they are and learn to give early. Too many selfish, spoilt brats in the modern world who do not care about others.

5. Charity Detox, what charity will look like if we cared about the results by veteran urban activist Robert Lupton. This book is majorly about giving out in a way that is not sustainable. Building soup kitchens and pantries where giving makes the giver feel good while leaving the receivers either dependent or in ruins. Some people give to get the cheer of the world not from the heart. A lot of religious organisations and international NGO’s are guilty of poverty as pornography. Giving for their own personal aggrandizement. Giving should be value and step aside please, it is not about you.

Bonus book:

Giving well, the ethics of Philanthropy by Patricia Illingworth et al

When helping hurts: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself.

Religion culture and political corruption in Nigeria Dhikru A. Yagboyaju, published in Africa’s public service delivery and performance review, Africa’s development watch.

Note: Many charities and religious organisations are defrauding poor people and taking donations given to the poor. They are feeding fat from philanthropy and pretending to be givers. Need I remind you all of the law of Karma. Enough said.