"Poverty" has been a topic in East and West for centuries and so many forums have discussed about it. Some will see this as not a very interesting subject anymore, for some it still is the most important issue because we see the ravages of it in our daily life. Most of the forums look at poverty in the material senses because the spiritual poverty is very hard and controversial to measure. Even the material poverty can be looked at in very different ways. One of that would be to look at from different perspectives; individual, family, community, state, country or world.

Even in the individual level, it is always intertwined with the political or societal pressures and influences exerted on us from others. If one comes across someone poor, what should one do? Give him $5 or change the causes of it. If one comes across someone poor and drunk, what should one do? Ignore him, or curse at him silently for getting himself into this state? If one comes across someone poor and mentally ill, what should one do? Put him in a shelter even though he did not want to stay there. Make mandatory law that would make police search for the homeless/ mentally ill people to go to the shelter in inclement weather. Or become indignant about social injustice and try to have a non-profit organization to deal with all these ills which we will face for a long time. Or just realize that it is too much for one person or community to affect any meaningful changes and leave it with politician or others to do their job even though we all know that those politicians or generals are only interested in their personal wealth.

For the community level, there are so many things that need consideration. Some feel that the poverty or starvation or famine in our old country is not as bad when we look at other African
countries where there were wars and natural disasters happening currently. Instead of focusing directly on the poverty, it would be more effective and rewarding to focus on the education state where children, who are the next generation that will lead Burma, should be given a better education and this will result in better community.

Whatever helps or programs that we are thinking in this forum, there are some other aspects that we all need to consider to be effective. Countries, not individual or a small group like us, have tried to help other countries with donations and aids for decades. U.S has been one of the big donors and the way the donations were implemented or utilized could be different depending on the recipient as well. Marshall Plan for the Europe and similar plan for the war-ravaged Japan were taken as quite effective. We cannot even in our wildest dream consider ourselves able to do anything like this.

Whatever we do will just be a drop in the ocean. To avoid that we have to consider other options or ways to implement what we desire for the old country. One option will be to think about motivating the community in Burma to help each other or themselves. To interact more with existing non-profit organizations who have shared ideas or intentions, to promote more charitable attitude among the upper and middle class in Burma. Some of our teachings or traditions will interfere with this approach and we can think about overcoming them by having more discussion or dialogue. One good example would be the idea to make a donation with no strings attached or with "Cetana Thone Tan” and without hesitation or without worrying about what happened after the donation. This is very good only for individual level, but it won't promote any responsibilities on the recipient and will only create dependency rather than self-sufficient community.

As a physician, I remembered being influential to some extent in my small way, in Burma during the political upheaval of 1988. There was a time when everybody was so scared about not able to get enough rice for them. What I initiated was to meet with a group of village elders, among them my friend Dr. Than Htike, to buy some supply of rice for the village and to sell back without any profit at all. We pooled our funds and used that to stockpile enough rice so that people who can't afford to buy for the whole month did not have to pay exorbitant price to pay the rice-merchant. Fortunately, we were able to keep the price very low for the small village where I lived and practiced. The point I am trying to make is to encourage our colleagues in government posts there in Burma to be influential in implementing different ideas to promote humanitarian ideas among the middle and upper class in Burma and, if possible, with the policy makers there. It should not be political in order to protect the good people there. If we are going to do this approach, we should not be talking or expecting political changes. We should just focus on the ground level with people helping each other.

There's a risk of being perceived as some rich guys from foreign countries who don't know what they want to do with their money and just squandering it away. No effective or permanent change will be induced. Or it is only good for a small measure. Finally, this is my own personal view and others will disagree with it. There's a need for more thoughtful discussion.

By Dr. Zaw Myint, M.D