the humanity and the sentiment of what they are doing is admirable. 100%.
when you are talking about giving directly, or going through an organization, you are talking about the effectiveness of your giving. i think, and there are about a billion studies to back this up, that it is more effective to give to an organization that specializes in identifying who will take and use a coat(for example) without selling it at the first opportunity. anecdotal example: there is a large collection of homeless dudes that live on the LA river by my house. they stand around asking for money at starbucks and other places. i have offered to buy them food, coffee, even offered a sleeping bag i had in my car to an older one on a cold morning. none of them wanted any of that stuff. refused it all. on the other hand, my wife is a social worker. daily, she deals with families with kids living in their cars, trying to stay clean, trying to get work, trying to find housing. they arent under overpasses, they arent all that visible because they are trying to get their life in order and often times are embarrassed. a new, good looking and functional jacket would mean so much to them. that, of course, does not mean that giving directly is without effect, just maybe a somewhat lesser effect on the whole. though, my guess is that on the (what i assume) relatively small scale, handing out 20 or 30 coats or donating 20 or 30 coats works out to a pretty similar level of effectiveness. this debate always ends up with "dont give anything to them, theyll just waste it", or "give something whenever you possibly can." but these are individual people, in different mental places, with different motives and needs. i think assuming that 100% of them will use the item and appreciate it is almost as foolish as assuming that 100% will immediately sell it for drugs. an organization that has a foothold in that community and can make informed decisions seems, to me, like a pretty good resource if one were to take a strategic view of the homeless problem. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
