Is charity enough?

Latin American Mission Program exploring issue of poverty on April 29

The Latin American Mission Program (LAMP) invites Islanders to an interactive community forum on charity.

The forum, entitled ‘Is charity enough? Asking why’ will be held at Our Lady of the Assumption Parish Hall in Stratford on Sunday, April 29 from 2-4 p.m.

There is no charge for the forum but pre-registration is preferred by April 25 in order to facilitate planning. Pre-register by calling Marie at 902-894-4573 or by email at burgemarie@gmail.com.

The goal of the forum is to explore with participants different ways of addressing poverty and other forms of isolation in P.E.I. Most people have a continuous experience of helping others in a charity way and are comfortable with that. But many also know that the charity model does not change the situation of people. It is short-term at best.

Organizers say there is a need to look at root causes of poverty and to ask why people are poor and why their condition remains unchanged no matter how much charity is applied. Looking at root causes, asking why and finding long-term solutions is what characterizes a social justice system.

The charity system is identified as a hand-out and/or a hand-up approach. It is based on responding to immediate (and sometimes emergency) needs. Social justice is a human rights approach and aims at creating policies which provide all people with the means of meeting their own basic needs with dignity.

LAMP in its relationship with Latin America has learned directly from the people that the roots of poverty in the Dominican Republic, though infinitely more intense, are similar to those in P.E.I.

“The forum is not proposing charity or social justice, but charity and social justice,’’ said Marie Burge, one of the LAMP forum organizers. “We encourage people who do charity, most of us on a daily basis actually, to change our framework from a help model to a social justice model. In other words, while we respond to peoples immediate needs, we recognize, promote and act on basic human rights as the basis. If we were to work always on the basis of people’s rights to have enough to live on decently and with respect, we are demanding new public policies, deep political change.”