Some are not miserable enough to deserve help

Today, I was visiting a shelter for boys - some of them are orphans, others had abusive parents. I was expecting fairly miserable conditions, and that was exactly what I found. 31 little creatures and a handful of teachers living in a two storey bungalow with no garden or playground. Iron furniture - double-deck beds and chest-high closets - cramming their tiny rooms. There's not enough of even this basic iron furniture - since not every boy has a bed, they tend to pile up their mattresses in the middle of the room and sleep all together, hugging each other like little kittens.

I was lucky to visit the shelter during school holidays, so I got to meet most of the boys. They are truly wonderful creatures - curious, friendly and lively. They are flocking around a table with colourful books, curious about animals, places, Apache Indians and ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, for some of the boys, these colourful books are the only education they will ever receive. There are 5 boys in the shelter, whose parents forgot or lost their birth certificates, the kids were condemned "stateless" and now, no school will accept them for studies.

While we are flipping through the bright pages of children's encyclopedia, Jeroen - a young volunteer teacher from the Netherlands - is telling me snippets from the life of the shelter. What really amazes and puzzles me, is that the shelter runs completely on voluntary donations - the state doesn't pay a penny to the shelter. There are 2 Chinese kids in the shelter, the rest are Tamil boys. The shelter is not allowed to take on Malay kids, because they cannot provide Halal food and they don't have prayer rooms. The shelter does not comply with these demands because Halal food is more expensive and there is not enough space as it is to accommodate an extra prayer room . Yet, since there are no Malay kids, there is no govenrment support. Kind of a vicious circle.

On my way back home, it is not the scars on the little bodies, nor the skinny arms and short cropped hair, nor the 5 boys who cannot go to school that hover on my mind, it is the sticky thought that the state refuses to help the shelter. I cannot believe that there may be a reason enough to decide that one shelter might not deserve to be supported. Selective welfare is like someone, trying to decide that you are less miserable than another, or you are miserable all right, but you are not important enough to be helped. When I think of those little boys, I cannot imagine who would dare to judge that they should be left to the mercy of voluntary donations.

Isn't charity sexy?

Yesterday, I was at another big Indian wedding here in Malaysia, and I was talking to one of the girls about charity. She is carving out time in her busy work schedule to do some charity work, and add purpose to her life. She confessed that, in the beginning, it was not easy to talk publicly about her charity work. Even now, most people would ask: "Why are you wasting your time?"

Angelina Jolie is a UNHCR (UN agency for refugees) Goodwill Ambassador.

This stuck in my mind and I started thinking, isn't charity something so fulfilling and amazing? No, to tell you the truth, at least in Malaysia, charity is completely not sexy. Here, most of the organisations in the non-profit or charity sphere are dominated by foreigners. People from all around the world are eager to come and work for little or no reward to solve problems Malaysians don't want to even acknowledge.

On the other hand, Malaysia has a large proportion of very rich people. Their wives, who don't need to earn an income beyond "pocket money", often end up doing some thing or another to keep them occupied. Besides the bustling social life, there are really two options - either open a little business, a pet project, such as jewelery, cooking or fashion; or, as an alternative, find a job - a busy-job, not a purpose-job. And some do charity, sporadicly and somewhat apathetically, "soft charity", something like making glamor shots to raise awareness in non-controversial, although surely important, issues.

Wouldn't it be great if more affluent women got involved in charity, and I mean hard-core charity, the not sexy kind of charity, something a bit controversial and not generally liked. If these rich women could meet eye to eye some of the most vulnerable and marginal communities in Malaysia, talk to them, understand them and sympathise with them, wouldn't that be amazing? I'm convinced it would make a huge difference in this society.