Drawing Attention...
In the wake of the success of Pentaport festival and the Ignite conference, Mountain Child is planning to host a benefit concert in Korea to raise funds. Planning this event has proven harder than expected. The reason being that in Korea the concept of charity is fairly new. Recently groups like Compassion and Worldvision have made a lot of progress in Korea. However, charity is not always looked upon as a positive thing.
I had a Korean friend explain to me recently that to Koreans the idea of charity can be shameful. Both to the receiver and to the giver. Which is why homeless people here beg with their faces to the ground, arms outstretched, and those who give, do it quickly without drawing a lot of attention. So the idea of doing a benefit concert in order to draw lots of attention to the work of Mountain Child has met with some resistance.
The good news is, of course, that Mountain Child is NOT a charity at all. It is not even close. Charity is just throwing money at a group of people, and that is soooo 1988. Most of the current NGOs out there today will agree that nobody wants to wait in line for handouts. The more commonly subscribed to ideologies these days focus more on education, training, development, employment, empowerment, and these types of things.
Which is why Mountain Child is not a charity. Mountain Child is working with the local people of the Himalaya to educate them, train them, and then is sending them back to their villages to help their own people. Mountain Child is about rescuing, raising, and returning indigenous people to their people groups, so that they are the ones helping their people. They are the ones who feel responsible to improve their quality of life. They are the ones who are empowered to bring relief to the hurting people of their own community. And that is something that is definitely worth drawing attention to.
Written by Mitch
