When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognising the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.
― Muhammad Yunus (2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and micro-finance)
The best charity is to help people to get up on their own feet, so that, they don’t have to be dependent on charity anymore.
It might be providing the education and basic needs. Help in acquiring vocational training, in setting up a small business or in buying equipment that’ll help in earning. It might be helping with advice, guidance or by sharing knowledge, skills and so on.
When you help others according to your capacity, you help your own spiritual development. You serve God through serving the humanity.
True charity starts from helping the person in need who’s nearest to you.
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Universal Spirituality 