I do not find it strange

Well you are very empathetic and generous. Most people casually tell them they don’t have any money and ignore them. In Indonesia, almost everyone is begging on the streets and we have to give them money because they never leave us (they assume tourists have a lot of money). I hope you don’t mind me going of topic. Arabs take advantage of it too. Welfare money we call it here in Australasia “Income Support”. A lot of people take advantage of the governments in the West. I don’t mean to stereotype but Arabs, South Asians take advantage of it. They work undercover and still feed off the taxes working people pay. In the United States, many Arabs also use food stamps even when they have a stable income. It’s sad. These nations give us a home and our people steal from them and find ways to justify it. You should write a post on Arab fraud in the West.

@sarah it sint only arabs that do it, many races do it. but dont find anything wrong with it. i live in the united states and it is a fact that my tax dollars are used to fund isreal, and when they fund isreal they kill my brothers and sisters back home. so who cares scam the dam government they scam us all the time. its free money why not use it. it is all apart of the hustle, its the west rememebr our capatalistic society pushes us to my as much money as we can the easiest and fastest way we can.

I agree with giving to the poor, i am the same way when i see people begging i give them what i got. but sometimes i do not give because, especially here in new york you find a lot of people that just want it to buy drugs and alcohol. if your hungry and you ask me to buy you food then by all means i will buy you food, but for me to give you money to support your habit i dont think so.

sorry excuse my spelling mistakes, “pushes us to MAKE* as much money as we can”

Osama,
you are absolutely right brother, Sarah must know the fact that most of the middle eastern employees or beggars were forced to leave their country by these Israeli occupiers.
Even a Saudi national working or Arab beggars on street in western countries would have had a job in Palestine if that country didn’t occupy by Israelis

@osama
I don’t agree with US backing Israel with its taxpayers money, but stealing is stealing, you can’t sugarcoat it. Yes, I am aware not only Arabs do it, I have met Caucasians who do it as well as Africans and Asians. The government for instance in Aus & NZ they gave many of these people a home, NZ is not involved in the Iraq War and chose not to send troops to Iraq. Does that mean, it is fair to rip off their government? I don’t think so. I care about what’s going on “back home” but when we immigrate, we take on a new life and a new beginning. FYI It’s not turning our backs on the M.E. but its merely learning to blend in and adapt to a new life. Sadly, most westerners associate this tax or welfare fraud with Muslims, it makes them overlook the honest people among us.

Did I mention false marriages to get homes from these overly indebt governments. One’s where I bring a cousin from M.E and claim he is my husband so he can get nationality. Or what about pretending to divorce my husband and secretly staying with him so the government can give me my own house? Even though these Western countries have contributed to destroying our homes and have made us homeless people (I’m referring to Palestinians and Iraqis) they still took us in and showed mercy to us, with the help of Allah of course because the other more affluent Arab nations don’t give a sh*t about us. If we are Iraqi or Palestinian we get treated like trash in KSA, Kuwait and Jordan. Some countries treat us better depending on the position of our politicians but most look down on us. My parents are Iraqi and believe me I know that for a fact.

It depends Mona, my father is lucky enough to own his own business, I’ve seen him offer local beggers (Saudi youth in their 20s it seems) jobs and they’ve turned him down.

The economics are messed up. If you give them $10 dollars and they work a busy corner where 500 people pass every hour and at least 1 % of humanity is still optimistic and good at heart and giving and empathetic … then they make $50 an hour and you make less.

If they make $50 an hour, they will never get employed… and so you grow the problem. I think this is the logic that people (like me) who rarely if ever give beggers work under.

There are different types of beggers and you have to understand this to know how to deal with them:

1- Career beggers: They target high traffic locations, have a solid sales pitch and work in a network and split the earnings…

2- Social drop offs: A person that lost $1M in the stock market, a person who lost his family in a devestating car accident and fell into drugs and alcohol and never was able to climb back into societal norms… someone who’s life was tramatized where they are lost … I know a Saudi guy who inherited $4M dollars and then got it all taken away from him in one gambling / drunken night in a Casino in egypt… they worked him dry and he now roams the streets of Jeddah talking nonsense …

3- Mental illness: self explanatory (partly related to the above).

4- Needy people that are sane, want to part of society, have some education, are not tramatized but have just had too many things go wrong (broken car, got fired, lots of debt, house repossessed…etc)

So depending on what the person’s background is, there are different ways to deal with them

Person #1 – give them capital and get them to start a legitemate business. A person that makes $50 dollars an hour begging will never take an $8 an hour job, but they may want to build a $2000 dollar an hour business and quit begging.

Person #2 – Give them a shower, a shave, a resume, some counceling or coaching, and a job… they just need that nudge back IN.. they will be fine.

Person #3 – needs professional help and will live off of tax payer money in some mental institute…. just get them off the street and into a care center.

Person #4 – welfare

My point is, in most of these cases money alone does not fix the root cause of the problem … you are a good person for wanting or trying to help, but it doesn’t make the problem go away and that might be what your co-worker is trying to argue (in a very dry inhuman way).

I forget the name but there is this one female entreprenuer that works in prisons in the US training inmates to build services companies when they leave prison and venture backs them to get things started.

If you make $10,000 a day from selling heroin before you get caught and put in jail, there is no way you will get out and take an $8 dollar an hour job at mcdonalds … the person inherently has a risk tolerant mindset with a very business / numbers savy brain, but they were operating in a criminal and regulated industry (drugs, perscription medication…etc)…

You take the same mindset and turn it on a legal product and service and you have a success story.

This should work to eliminate ‘professional beggers’…

Who knows, i’m not a social expert. Being totally empathatic here, If i were on the street begging, I’d hope you don’t give me $10 but ask me what I need to get back to a self sufficient state….

Well you have a point, but me too most of the times think that they are just thieves. I think it’s the duty of the government to make the distinguish, and its better if we pay the money to organization that makes the process more efficient by giving these people food or shelters so they don’t spend the money on drugs. Its really hard to believe that some guy in his 20’s with good health (at least that what seems to be) and begging for money.

”In Indonesia, almost everyone is begging on the streets”

Wow, that is quite a statement. x

Hey Mona, I don’t know much about how Canada works but I’m pretty sure it’s similar to the UK in terms of welfare/healthcare. It breaks my heart to see so many homeless people and it’s such a gigantic issue. It’s bull$hit that people who live rough all year round make the kind of money Haitham’s talking about but I will concede that only 2/3 people who sleep rough in summer are still sleeping rough in winter so that’d make 1/3 either scam artists or dead come harsher times.

I volunteer for a homeless charity in the UK so can I say THANK YOU Mona for not automatically treating them like scum. There are so many reasons why people are on the streets it’s ridiculous to think of them all the same way. There are some who are so angry with society and mentally damaged that they can’t cope with being indoors again, one of the guys we’d arranged housing at the YMCA for had a panic attack indoors, the best compromise I could get out of him was letting him sleep under a bench in the garden

I personally feel that giving money to an organisation does more to help more people, but seriously Mona, having ‘normal’ people stop, make eye contact and treat them in a humane way’s a big deal to them. :up:

@Mona
They showed an elderly woman on TV here who makes breakfast and distributes to the homeless here, it is heart warming. The corporations make the gap between the rich and the poor bigger everyday. Many people here are losing their jobs and selling off their mortgage owned homes by auction. I think in the West the governments make it almost impossible for a homeless person to starve to death. In Asia, its another story. Even in oil rich Brunei, we have many poor people there who eat out of trash cans. No one over there cares, people just pass them by in the streets. Everyone “looks rich” because of luxury cars purchased in debt, 2 weeks after their pay check, their money runs out. The live off pumping the cars $5 worth of gas and going to local restaurants where they eat a plate of local food for a $1. Most people assume Bruneian people as lavishly wealthy only because the wealth of the Sultan is heavily exaggerated in the media, this a very false stereotype and not many people know it. You can say between 15-20% of people their mainly ministers and some business people are very very wealthy, but most people are below middle class or poor. Furthering on about Indonesia, random people come up to you and shake your hand or kiss you on the cheek and ask for money. Because they went through all this trouble, you end up taking out a 1000/5000 Rps bill and giving it to them. You can say 90% of people there are poor or middle class and struggling, and 10% are extravagantly wealth and mainly Chinese business men. One time I was shopping with my mother and it was raining heavily. This man with a horse and carriage came up to us and offered to show us all of Yogajakata for 5000 Rps (less than $2). We were planning to go to another city the next day and told him, we won’t be here long, he ignored that, and continued insisting on offering us the ride, because it was raining, we were tied up, otherwise we would have given him the money and declined the ride This problem can only be solved with the wise Quran/Biblical verse “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, If you to teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime”.

hey, what an interesting topic Mona u came up with and everyone here talking about off topic or maybe not “on welfare money”. Mona u must be very rich to give $5 or even $10 Dollars for these people hehehehe any ways what some people doing of taking advantage of welfare money is quiet embarrasing and some times they are really not in need to do this.Its good to help others but i think gining mony non of the solution part in somehow i mean its better to show them how to enhance thier situation to get a job or how to save mony i dont know, any thing could help rather than begging on streets.In addition, welfare money could be the final source of support for any one and for emerginses not for the whole life as many people think.

good one keep up Mona

Fatemah

I don’t want to debate US, Iraq, Christian, Muslim etc. I find homelessness very sad, and when I’m with a roof over my head and food to eat believe it’s wrong not to help where you can. That’s why I have one blog completely dedicated to helping homeless through knitting and crocheting.

I alone can’t solve the problem, and pointing fingers at whom I believe to be at fault get’s nothing positive done; but helping to cloth a homeless person when it’s frigid is something I can and do help with.

This is the program I mentioned earlier by Catherine Rohr
P.E.P.

Much respect for her work. Also much respect to your work @sandy …

Good job, Mona! (even if you don’t need a pat on the back for being humane)
It reminds me of the time I went to a store, on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, and a woman was shyly asking for some money. The way another customer had yelled at her riveted her and myself in our spots! That was one more reason I had to distance myself from my society. When you think El Baraka Bank claims to help the needy …

he should be put on the street 4 a week without his wallet or any money n see how long it takes him 2 ask 4 some change

I have always thought well of you, but learning this has made me think _very_ well of you.

So many people see homeless, and I guess they see some kind of alien; they lack empathy for others.

I applaud you for what you do.

If people think that it’s so easy to live off the govt, they should try sometimes. I was voluntarily w/o a permanent home (bicycle trip), unemployed for a year (the fast foods don’t always hire you right away), and I failed to get one welfare b/c I was too wealthy (despite lack of work).

Having a job is soooo much better than any amount of hand-outs.

When I took bicycle trip, people gave to me freely w/o treating me like I was a scammer, and I wanna return the favor.

You are wonderful.

Once someone still looked young beg us for money, a friend of mine gave him some money, another friend of mine complained, “You shouldn’t do that. It made him more lazy”. My friend who had given the beggar money said, “If I didn’t give him money, he would steal or even rob people. It’s more dangerous. So it’s lesser of 2 evils. I choose the less”.

I think that’s quite logic.

Since I started working downtown this is something I have wrestled with. You and I likely see many of the same homeless people every day. I guess I’ve been ‘conditioned’ not to offer money as so many might be using the money for drugs, alcohol, and money just encourages that, but what else can I do? Offer food? Then I have to make food, but what if someone is allergic to something? Plus, I’d rather give something healthy. And what about the guy I saw near the market the other day who held a sign saying he was dying from cancer and could not afford treatment? What can I do for him?

I’m going to figure it out…I’ll let you know when I do.

At this point, I am to beg people for money on the street. Quit my job a year ago, lost a good guy a year ago, and haven’t stepped out of the house for a year. Ah, early-late-twenties crises!

This reminds me of a similar thing I wrote earlier this year – also about begging; and the views of different people:

http://dreamlife.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/the-beg-issue/

God did not decide that there should be poor people. It is much simpler.

For every species, there is the fact that resources are finite, and demand is (usually) always bigger than supply. In nature, those who are most successful in aqcuiring resourses (food, shelter) are most succesful in procreation. Some members of the species are unsuccesful and die. We humans however, do not live naturally, and thus there are rich and succesful people without children, and many poor with lots (the reason for that is also economical, children can be breadwinners in poor countries, but costly because of education in rich countries). The drive to aqcuire resources however is unchanged. In civilized nations the unsuccesful dont die, but are supported or become beggars. Some beggars can even become succesful at it, and basically become succesful parasites.

@osama: you’re using up money that belongs to the really needy. If enough people with your attitude scam the system, social security will become too expensive and limited or even abolished.