• Skip to content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • News
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Archives
    • Volume 16: 2014/2015
    • Volume 15: 2013/2014
    • Volume 14: 2012/2013
    • Volume 13: 2011/2012

Student Independent News

NUI Galway Student Newspaper

  • Home
  • About
  • Get Involved
  • Contact Us
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy Policy

In defence of adults who don’t donate to charity

October 7, 2019 By Sin Admin Leave a Comment

Image result for charity

By Shauna Mc Hugh

An Offaly schoolgirl made national headlines recently for her astounding fundraising efforts.  Ten-year-old Lexie Delaney has raised over €3,000 to help the homeless, with the help of her family and classmates. As well as organizing several fundraisers, the selfless child has even donated some of her own communion money to the cause. 

While such generosity is remarkable at any age, would it be more surprising if an adult were to do the same thing? In post-recession Ireland, where we’ve all had to make sacrifices just to make ends meet and get ourselves by, have us ‘adults’ become all too familiar with turning a blind eye to those less fortunate than ourselves? 

As children, we are blissfully unaware of all the financial pressures that lie ahead in later life. Our parents often took care of everything for us, and never let on if, or when, there were money problems at home. When you have a good upbringing and want for nothing, it’s easy to believe, as a child, that you have an endless supply of money. 

Once you move out and make the unwelcome discovery of how expensive adult life is, from crippling rent prices to petrol costs and weekly grocery shops, reality quickly kicks in. When you barely have enough funds to finance your own life, how can you possibly help someone else to pay for theirs, no matter how desperately you want to? 

As well as being preoccupied with our own financial woes, adults are also less naïve than young children. We’ve all read enough stories about charity scams and hoaxes to make us think twice about donating to so-called good causes. In 2016, The Journal revealed that many of Ireland’s top charities had CEOs earning extravagant six-figure annual salaries. These charities included Barnardo’s, The Irish Cancer Society, Focus Ireland, and the ISPCA, to name just a few. 

Meanwhile, in local news, a Galway man was recently discovered to be holding bogus charity collections. Brian Ward from Tuam received a prison sentence of two months, after Gardai approached him during a collection for Focus Ireland on Galway’s Shop Street and he failed to produce any authorization from the charity. 

Therefore, it’s not as simple as adults being less generous than children, but rather that they’re more cautious with their money. Why would we put hard-earned money into a bucket, only to later read headlines that make us question who the donation actually goes to? Even when donating to a legitimate charity, there are issues we can’t ignore. Surely there’s a problem when the general public feels ashamed that they can’t afford to make a meaningful donation to the very same organizations powered by bosses earning salaries that most of us can only dream of? 

With all this being said, I sincerely hope that Lexie doesn’t lose her generous nature as she grows up. I do believe that the majority of us adults remain as caring and generous as we were in childhood, it’s just that our best wishes to help others often come into conflict with our need to look out for ourselves first and foremost, now that we’re less reliant on our parents to do so for us.  

In an ideal world, we would all go our whole lives with Lexie’s child-like optimism, that our acts of goodwill can make a difference to those who need it most, ignorant of the stories of corrupt charity schemes. Sometimes, though, adult life is just so difficult to steer in the right direction that it’s impossible to think of bettering a stranger’s life as well.  

Adults don’t have less generosity than children, we just don’t have the same blind faith that children do in charity, and we have learned the value of money, through tough life experiences that children, like Lexie, haven’t been exposed to yet. 

I, personally, would love to have achieved as much as Lexie has for the homeless community, but as a struggling student surrounded by many others in the same sinking boat, I don’t think any fundraiser we could put together would be very effective. It’s not because we don’t want to help the disadvantaged, it’s just that we’re only a SUSI payment away from becoming charity cases ourselves… 

Follow Us
Facebook Follow
Twitter Follow

Related

Filed Under: Opinion

Reader Interactions

Drop us a comment! Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Tweets by NuigSin

More News

Youtuber Makeup – made for passion or just for money?

Youtuber Makeup – made for passion or just for money?

By Alice O'Donnell It seems that, for as long as YouTube has been around, … [Read More...] about Youtuber Makeup – made for passion or just for money?

Travel Junkie: Ladakh, India

Travel Junkie: Ladakh, India

By Varun Dua  Ladakh is the northernmost part of India, bordering Tibet and … [Read More...] about Travel Junkie: Ladakh, India

Celebrity Halloween Costumes: The Good, the Bad and the Hilarious

Celebrity Halloween Costumes: The Good, the Bad and the Hilarious

  By Amanda Leeson   Halloween 2019 may be over, but we are all still … [Read More...] about Celebrity Halloween Costumes: The Good, the Bad and the Hilarious

The Perks of Shopping Vintage

The Perks of Shopping Vintage

By Jonathan Browne  Vintage clothing is a very popular scene across Europe at … [Read More...] about The Perks of Shopping Vintage

The five-minute face: A beginner’s guide to clean beauty

The five-minute face: A beginner’s guide to clean beauty

    By Megan Frei  With freezing winter days and … [Read More...] about The five-minute face: A beginner’s guide to clean beauty

Footer

RSS Latest SU News

  • SU Weekly Email 15 – 5th Dec 2019 December 5, 2019
  • SU Weekly Email 14 – 28th November 2019 November 28, 2019
  • Wind Down Week November 27, 2019
  • Students’ Union Welcomes University of Sanctuary Designation November 22, 2019
  • SU Weekly Email 13 – 21st November 2019 November 21, 2019

Recent Posts

  • Youtuber Makeup – made for passion or just for money?
  • Travel Junkie: Ladakh, India
  • Celebrity Halloween Costumes: The Good, the Bad and the Hilarious
  • The Perks of Shopping Vintage
  • The five-minute face: A beginner’s guide to clean beauty

Recent Comments

  • Vegan Restaurants Galway – Hostel Dublin & Galway on The Temple Café: A Social Enterprise making a difference in Galway
  • Mom Jeans on the rise: What next, Grandma crop tops? – Fox in Thought on Mom jeans on the rise
  • “Young Sheldon” — Student Independent News (SIN) – The Bigger Picture on Young Sheldon promises to entertain and fill in The Big Bang Theory’s gaps

Copyright © 2019 SIN Student Newspaper. All rights reserved.