Post-CIP thoughts

During the course of my CIP trip to Myanmar, there are several issues which bugged me. For those who actually read my posts, perhaps you all can share your views on them.

1. True Altruism?

There were numerous sessions whereby our team members shared their reasons for joining the CIP. I can't recall a single person (including myself) whose main motivation is to help the needy. Common reasons include: Experience OCIP, see Myanmar, challenge yourself etc. It seems that we are doing it mainly because for our own motives.

I am wondering whether there are actually people who are joining these overseas expeditions out of true altruism. I asked Ho Teck why did he join Project Angel after already being part of BHBH last summer; his reply was that it was fun during the expeditons.

My feeling is that we should be more concerned about how our efforts can improve the conditions of our beneficiaries instead on about how much we could gain from it.

2. Donations

As this was our first trip there, the team was not able to accurately gauge the costs. Hence we ran into the problem of over-budgeting. I don't know all the details but at the end of the trip we donated about a million worth of kyats (approx. 1100 sgd) to the orphanages.

The donors had generously provided the team in both cash and kind for this expedition. However if we take a closer look, most of the money did not go directly into helping the orphans. Most of the money ended up being spent on housing, feeding and transporting us. What percentage of the donation is actually being utilized to benefit the orphanages? At the end I feel kind of bad when we are splurging (by Burmese standard) on our meals in order to meet our food budget.

As Shahid said, won't it be better if we just give them the money? Well another set of problems surface. How do we ensure that money is properly used? How do we ensure that those in control of money will not abuse our trust? It is difficult to solve this moral dillemma.

3. Prostelyzing

An interesting fact about this expedition is that only 5 out of the 14 participants are non-Christians. The organization that we are working with is a Christian one and the orphanages that we visited are ran by pastors. Hence there is a fair amount of prayers and mentions of God during the trip.

While I consider myself to be tolerant, I admit that there were instances whereby the atmosphere was too Christian. Even the Christian members were worried that the non-Christians were uncomfortable. I hadn't anticipate it but on a hindsight perhaps I should have.

At the end of the trip, we asked Pastor Patrick (our coordinator) what is his motivation behind helping the Burmese orphans. His reply was frank: he wanted to spead the word of God.

Perhaps it was the same thing which motivated Mother Theresa as well. However I will prefer a secular expedition if I get a say.

Last but not least, I'm glad that our efforts managed to bring some benefits to the orphanages; we can still make improvements and bring more benefits to the orphans if there are subsequent expeditions.