It always sounds good to help someone in need. Especially with poverty levels such as those evident in our country, extending one’s support to the poor is a virtuous task. Every society has its poor and rich sections. Though we may see the rich feeding the poor every day, holidays seem to push people into doing it even more. Accordingly, feeding the poor holiday meals is this week’s topic for Society.

Doing good deeds better

Feeding the poor on holidays is an act that most individuals usually do for religious reasons; Muslims and Christians tend to do it more in their major fasting seasons and holydays. NGOs, on their part, do it mostly for humanitarian reasons. Some even carry it out on a daily and weekly basis and construct feeding centers for the purpose.
Since poverty is an international problem irrespective of the development stage of nations, providing those in need of food with meals regularly or otherwise is a very humane thing to do. As all of us well know, resources are not allocated equally in a society – some have plenty of them while others barely have them. Bridging this unfair disparity in resources between individuals in a society is an extremely daunting task – may be nearly unattainable. But there still are lots of efforts to at least narrow the gap into a reasonable size.
Although providing the poor with meals on holidays seems such a lame effort towards ensuring that, it reminds people of the responsibilities they have for others who do not have the same opportunities and awakens them off the oblivity they have been tucked in. That might set off a personal or group effort towards alleviating the problem.
The fact that its remedy is not permanent, however, still remains a major set back as to being sure if that is an efficient option. It might even pose quite a hurdle in validating the whole ordeal. Consider the case of a humanitarian organization feeding say a couple of thousand people every week. Let’s just say that this organization has a feeding centre built for this purpose with tables and chairs to make it completely comfortable. Well, the weekly cost for preparing food to a couple of thousand people would definitely be a significant amount of money. Add that to the cost of building a feeding centre – I have recently heard one that cost 400 thousand birr – and the tables, chairs, plates and other utensils needed for the task, and you will be amazed at the total annual cost. Such organizations spend thousands of birr weekly to provide a certain amount of people with a meal. There is no harm in that, but a consideration of the effect of such an action might not be as noble. First, providing them with a meal a week is not going to help them much because they have lots of meals to look for the rest of the week. Secondly, it might even develop a sense of dependence, if they never had one, or more of it, if they already had it, in the poor. A better option might be using the budget to come up with some kind of income generating scheme that involves the poor and equips them with skills to make them important in the job market.
All I am trying to say is that helping out people is a nice thing but it has to be done sustainably whenever situations permit.

What is your opinion about
feeding the poor holiday meals?

I see no problem with that. In fact, I think it doesn’t have to be just on holidays. Doing something good doesn’t have to be associated with some special days, it rather has to be part of our daily lives.

Netsanet, Nurse

We are very poor and I would say we need to support each other at all times. It would have been wonderful if we could afford to feed the poor every day, but the truth is we are a nation striving to work out its food self sustainability issues. That makes us wait for special moments like holidays to engage ourselves in such an act.

Mengistu, Driver

I have seen shoe shine boys and laborers join a queue of beggars at a restaurant handing out food for free in commemoration of a deceased relative. I do not think that is a good sign as feeding the non-working poor might also lead the working poor to feel that may be daily meals are not hard to come by – all they have to do is beg for it. So, may be it is not completely a good thing to do.

Samuel, Layout designer