Grace

How many times have you witnessed the plight of street children and felt that something should be done to ensure that their lives are about more than just learning to survive? How many times have you observed others watch the effects of famine and express their conviction that something should be done to alleviate the suffering of people whose lives were held tightly in its grip? More importantly, how many times have you seen this desire to do good not progress beyond wishful thinking, or become merely a shadow of its true potential?

Many reasons can be offered for the disparity between people’s level of caring and what is exhibited by their actions – lack of awareness of social problems, concern with personal wellbeing, disillusionment and a sense of powerlessness among others. Rather than dwell on these shortcomings, however, I would like to suggest a way in which they might be overcome.

There is already a great deal of humanitarian activity taking place around the world. The question is: how can it be popularised so that participation in it becomes both frequent and widespread within society as a whole?

In my view, the key lies in increasing its visibility. Not changing how it is presently done – streamlining or centralising it for greater efficiency – but simply documenting it as it currently stands and placing this information within easy reach of the general public.

There are two distinct goals behind this approach. The first one has to do with the sense of personal accomplishment. Having a tangible feeling of the difference that each individual contribution makes would go a long way towards alleviating the powerlessness that stems from facing problems of this magnitude.

The second goal behind increasing the visibility of humanitarian work is to make it easy for people to integrate it into their daily lives. Knowing which humanitarian activities are in need of assistance and when and where this assistance can be provided is critical in this regard.

As an example, consider the case of a single social problem – that of homelessness – in a single location – the city of Johannesburg in South Africa, where I live. Despite being the business centre of the country and a source of substantial wealth, it serves as a home to a sizeable street population. Most of these people have migrated to the city from rural areas. With nowhere to go, they now live and make a living on the streets. Because their resources are severely limited, they rely on humanitarian assistance from various organisations, such as churches and social welfare.

How can the visibility of these activities be increased so as to encourage wider and more frequent participation? The first step is to gather information on the humanitarian work that is currently being done.

Firstly, the cause of the problem needs to be explained – where do homeless people come from? This is an important source of ideas on how to tackle it. The consequences of the problem also need to be described – what does it mean to be homeless? What effect does it have on the person’s life? Lastly, the extent of the problem needs to be quantified – if nothing is done to help these people, what hardships will they face and what shortages will they experience?

Secondly, current efforts at dealing with the problem need to be documented – what is the nature and extent of this assistance, and what inroads has it made? It is crucial that information be given on organisations that are busy providing assistance, as they are often dependent on external support for their work. Knowing what they need and how to contact them is particularly important for people to convert their good will into action.

Lastly, it is important to outline the work that still needs to be done. This is essentially the difference between the size of the problem and the current relief efforts. It is this kind of information that should leave people with a clear sense that the problem is finite in size and that each contribution, however seemingly insignificant, has a measurable effect.

When all of this information is put together, what should emerge is a picture of homelessness that is comprehensive enough to tell an accurate story for the city as a whole, localised enough to motivate each resident to deal with the problem, and detailed enough to empower them to do so. All that is still needed is to place it in the public domain.

The power of the proposed approach lies in not being limited to a single social problem in a single location. Homelessness was used as an example because it amounts to a failure to meet a very basic human need. Shortages of food, clean water and clothing are often interconnected and are equally dire. While these should definitely take priority, many other activities can benefit from the same approach – taking care of disabled people, creating and maintaining local infrastructure and ecological restoration being just a few examples.

In each of these domains, the problem can be tackled on multiple levels. Urban districts and their rural counterparts are the smallest units for which data collation makes sense and so constitute an obvious starting point. Once their data is available, it can be combined into regions, provinces or states, then countries, continents and finally the planetary network.

Even at the lowest level, this is an ambitious undertaking. Many details have to be worked out and many obstacles have to be overcome if it is to be implemented smoothly and reliably.

However, it is the kind of undertaking that is able to feed on its own success. Every accomplishment serves to reinforce the drivers of change on which the initiative relies for its progress. It is this consciousness-raising quality that gives it the potential to transform our society – the potential to resolve the many social problems that plague it once and for all.

Join me in turning this dream into reality.