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Should One Feel Ashamed of Being an Employee of a Charity Foundation?

August 16, 2011, 0:00 2667 Author: Iryna Gavrisheva, translated by Daria Sukach irinka-hema.livejournal.com Helping the needy is a really complicated endeavor which requires both great human and financial resources. It is extremely difficult to execute effectively strictly on a volunteer basis

“The Happy Child” Charity Foundation in 2006

This is a typical conversation I have with various people. They ask me, “What do you do?” I answer, “I work for “The Happy Child” Charity Foundation. You might have seen our posters”. “Well, do they ever pay you any money?”, they retort as if expecting me to reveal a great secret of how I steal children’s donations. I say, “Well, yes. I do get a little salary…” “Ahhhhh…”, they respond disappointedly, “You’re paid for working in the Charity Foundation…”

After such exchanges I somehow feel myself ashamed. I feel ashamed for getting money for doing kind deeds. And at the same time I ask myself whether one should feel ashamed for helping people?

I was highly inspired by the idea of volunteering when I joined the volunteer movement five years ago. I used to tell everyone enthusiastically, “We are not any foundation; we are just volunteers of the “Children of Zaporizhia” website. We are just humans who care about children.” I was truly proud of the fact that our team of volunteers worked “for free”, without any bank accounts, regulations and salaries. We had a big dream of creating a large team of volunteers that could help all the needy children in the hematology department (we could not dare to dream of any bigger projects since Albert and I could hardly manage hematology issues). Rocks of reality soon broke our dream. The number of sick children that needed our help was constantly increasing and new volunteers were coming and leaving due to difficult working conditions. We could not manage anything in time – we had no experience, we lacked skills and we had no team we could rely on! The only solution would be to be a team consisting of either highly principled people or people who receive salaries. A volunteer who is inspired to help without any rewards will most likely let you down one day. Without any motivations (personal or financial) she or he will one day find more important things to do. There were only two “highly” inspired volunteers, but even we had our own jobs…

When I just got involved in “volunteering”, I had so many different jobs. Or it’s better to say I had a great number of part-time jobs. Journalism, website searching, and simple web administration – I did not earn much, but the money allowed me to pay for the Internet and telephone connections and other small things. I remember very well the moment when the hematology department was full of seriously sick kids who needed Granocyte and I was snowed under with my all part-time jobs’ orders at the same time. I was glued to my computer screen ten hours a day without any breaks, simultaneously speaking with parents of sick children on the phone who urgently needed some vitally important medicine. My part-time employers insisted that I complete the database by 5 p.m., while Albert simultaneously asked me to place on the website some current treatment news about a child by the same time. The only thing I could do at that moment was to sit down and burst into tears as I could never manage all of these activities by the 5 p.m. deadline. So, I had to make a choice between my part-time jobs and being a volunteer. I had to choose between an ordinary database of my potential clients and a child’s life. My choice seemed obvious, but I knew full well that the day I did not finish the database, would be the day I would have no money to pay for the Internet and without the Internet, I would not be able to help the children.

When such episodes started to regularly repeat themselves, I realized that volunteering and charity work were great, but what I was doing was not just charity, but managing a real help system. Moreover, to make this system function flawlessly, one must devote much time to it. In fact, one must do nothing but devote all their time to running this help system. If one wants to help children effectively, one should think constantly of the children instead of when I can publish an article or when I can complete a database. Eventually, we reached an agreement with some of our regular sponsors to pay me the same salary I earned doing my no-volunteer activities and I quit all my part-jobs and dedicated myself only to helping children. Since that time I have been involved in foundation issues only (Only later did our volunteer group turn into a charity foundation, as accounts and a legal status were required for further development). So, why should I feel ashamed?

The lack of trust our society has in charity foundations is well-known and understood. I myself did not really trust any charity organizations. One can also understand donor’s desires to transfer donations to a specific person. This is why most charity foundations raise money not only by placing contributions in their bank accounts, but also the personal bank accounts of the needy. And again, these bank accounts are published on the website, together with the article about a needy person and his or her documents, etc. This website should be prominent so donors could easily find it and help. Besides, donors should be absolutely sure of the real identity of a person they will help. It should be transparent that the bill for a treatment abroad is straight from the clinic and not mediators who add an additional 50% or a fraudulent clinic that treats no one knows what by unknown methods.

Well, what do I mean to say by all this? I would like to say that helping the needy is a really complicated system which requires both great human and financial resources. And it’s extremely difficult to keep this system effectively functioning strictly on a volunteer basis. Lena Grachyova from the “Advita” Charity Foundation has recently written about this issue very well. Her article is about how this helping system functions and about the pernicious stereotypes in our society that hinder the system’s well-being. I think this article will be helpful to everyone who reads it…

So, coming back to the main question I raised at the beginning of my article–Yes, I am an employee of a charity foundation, and yes, I do get a salary. Should I feel ashamed for that?

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