The Charitable Side of Csr

A brief introduction:

In 2010 77% of the Dutch population has given money to a charity, which equals 12.926.765 individuals. On the contrary, only 46% of the Dutch people have helped a complete stranger in the last month. Now isn’t this quite weird. How can we be charitable, and at the same time not willing to help someone out? And how about the ‘Goodness 500’, a ranking of 500 companies and their CSR policy, including donations to charity? How can large enterprises like McDonald’s come in 321th place on this ranking? Don’t they have a moral obligation to donate to the less developed countries in Africa, having a 27 billion dollar turnover?

With money comes power, and with power comes money. True. But doesn’t responsibility come with both? Isn’t a wealthier person obliged to help a less-fortunate one? And what is helping, does it involve giving money, education, shelter, and to whom are you giving it? I believe that just giving money is far from good enough, giving money is actually the worst thing you could do.

Inequity:

“Money makes the world go round”, absolutely true. Without money there wouldn’t be electricity, there wouldn’t be a financial crisis, but moreover, there wouldn’t be inequity. And I believe that is where we should start, with inequity.

Inequity. In a world that seems to be smaller than ever before. The news, the internet, social media and so on, we know what happened where, in less than 10 minutes, even though we’re at the other side of planet Earth. We know of the on-going misery in Africa, we know of collapsed buildings in India and we know of Tsunamis in Indonesia. We can see these people on the news every day, knowing and feeling their pain. We feel sorry for them and start a charity, for them. We donate money to them, for them. We’re feeling better about ourselves, thanks to them. But should we feel better about ourselves, did we really help someone out.

Well, first of all, that depends on the cause you are giving your...