The Relationship between Aid and Quality of Life

Abstract

This chapter reviews the current types of aid and looks at how more and more people and organizations are getting involved in aid and philanthropy actions. To do this, it begins by describing the characteristics of current societies. Although the state has traditionally been the provider of responses to the needs of the population, the last decades have seen an increase in responses coming from non-governmental organizations, religious associations, citizens and social groups—particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter further highlights how helping other people not only has an impact on the well-being of the recipients, but also on that of the givers. The chapter concludes with two cases: a social communication project during the COVID-19 sanitary emergency and a program of fellows for peace.

Cases

6.1.1 Case 1: Online Religious Services Within the Framework of the COVID-19 Sanitary Emergency as a Social Communication Project by M. Gabriel Barba

The COVID-19 pandemic found Latin America suffering from low economic growth and high levels of inequality and social vulnerability, with increasing levels of poverty and extreme poverty (ECLAC, 2020). According to UN-Argentina (2020), difficulties in gaining access to food and basic hygiene systems (such as drinking water or sanitation) expose families in vulnerable areas to potential COVID-19 infections, as well as to other infectious diseases (Tonon et al., 2021, p. 217).

Among the measures adopted in response to the pandemic, it is worth highlighting the case of the Diocese of Gregorio de Laferrere in the Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Bishopric comprises a number of districts with a population of 1,200,000, out of which nearly 39% live in poverty.

The Bishopric has coordinated a series of solidarity actions carried out by the neighbors in the buildings of the Diocese, which have thus become spaces of reference for the members of the community. In addition, the Bishopric has a central role of social support in the neighborhoods and has implemented a series of contingency actions, including live-streaming religious services held in the cathedral (Tonon et al., 2021). Thus, the different festivities in the religious calendar were celebrated via a channel and other platforms and interactive tools (Facebook and Instagram), an e-mail account, and a WhatsApp line. This has made it possible to design a complex mechanism to accompany local residents in times of widespread concern, anguish, and fear. Likewise, the Bishopric implemented campaigns—such as inviting children in the community to send photos with drawings of flowers to decorate the broadcast of services—to engage different audiences in the collective construction of innovative experiences. To hold online religious services within the framework of the COVID-19 sanitary emergency became a social communication project, aside from its eminently religious content. It is an experience of community and personal accompaniment and assistance, carried out remotely, which makes a contribution to human development, in accordance with Sen’s (2000, p. 55) approach that development is a process of expansion of the real freedoms that people enjoy. This experience can also be associated with the capability of the senses, imagination and thought proposed by Nussbaum (2012) in her list of capabilities, when she identifies the importance of using imagination and thought for experiencing and producing religious works and events, in ways protected by freedom of religious exercise (Nussbaum, 2012, p. 53). Moreover, the experience is linked to the affiliation capability defined by Nussbaum (2012, p. 54) as “being able to live with and toward others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction”.

When consulted about this experience, the Bishop referred to the different ways in which religious institutions have provided aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, and pointed to the protagonist role of the Catholic Church. In commenting on his previous experience as Bishop for six years (2014–2020) in the Diocese of Gregorio de Laferrere, he described the socio-cultural context of the area, which is located in the poor peripheries surrounding the city of Buenos Aires. The bishopric under his charge at that time had a population of over one million inhabitants, most of them living under the poverty line and lacking basic access to drinking water and sanitation services, and working far from home. Streets are unpaved and highly insecure. COVID and the quarantine added to that difficult social situation, isolation and unemployment. The economic situation was critical. Added to this was the fear and uncertainties caused by the pandemic. The Bishop commented that his concern was how to contain people and reassure them insofar as that was possible, as there was a growing feeling of fear and social insecurity. Before the pandemic, he had put up an infrastructure in the Cathedral Church so that he could live stream Mass on Facebook and YouTube. Some months before (and without foreseeing the pandemic), he was working on it and live streaming church services, with the idea of reaching the elderly and bedridden that could not attend Mass. With the help of volunteers, the Bishop managed to assemble a first-class YouTube livestream structure, with four HD cameras set up in a small study in the sacristy of the Church. The day when the quarantine began, the two volunteers in charge, a man and a woman who worked only on Sunday, offered to do the livestream every day for free, as they were doing up to that moment. At that moment the Bishop made the decision to conduct the live Mass celebrations in such a way that people could interact instead of being mere spectators. That was his first concern, and the second was to have people pray Mass from their homes “almost” as if they were attending the church in person. Additionally, during breaks he gave techniques for the prevention of COVID and showed materials and videos he had obtained from some universities and friend doctors. Moreover, he managed to establish a very important dialogue with the people following the masses. As all of this was happening, the pandemic brought about a new problem when people died. The family could not recognize the body and there was no funeral. They could not have an in-person Mass. To remedy the situation, the Bishop asked them to print out a photo, which was put in a frame on the altar and a prayer was offered for the family. Families met “virtually” from faraway places (neighboring countries and provinces). This was a big leap to accompany and contain people. The mass of each day became a place of encounter and, above all, of great containment and peace for all ages. Children and young people were also provided with spaces to interact. The chats which they used to communicate with the Bishop and his assistants and write their prayer intentions became a space for dialogue and mutual containment. They made contact every day and were eager to speak about their personal issues. Needless to say, the number of participants grew exponentially, from 500 YouTube subscribers to 7000 in only 100 days. A phrase that was coined in those days, which came up as people said goodbye to each other every day: “Till tomorrow, see you at Mass”. Through these concrete and immediate actions, the Church has undoubtedly been a major actor in providing containment in the crisis brought about by COVID and the quarantine (Barba).

6.1.2 Case 2. Fellows for Peace Program by Stacy Kosko

One of our expert related a case when she was fresh out of her Master of Science in Foreign Service program at Georgetown University, she took a job at The Advocacy Project, a tiny human rights NGO based in Washington, DC. One of her main roles was to oversee the Fellows for Peace program. Each spring she would hire and train one to two dozen current graduate students who would then deploy for three summer months to one of the community-based partners all over the world. All of the partners were very small organizations that had grown out of the community and were working locally to do human rights advocacy, development, or conflict resolution.

One of the fellows, we’ll call her E, was in between her first and second year of graduate school, was assigned to an Afghan women’s organization. E had had a lot of experience as a community organizer, leading workshops and training other organizers in a big city in the US. That’s why we hired her and why the Afghan women’s group was excited to have her come and train them. E, ever the mindful cosmopolitan, was very concerned about coming off as arrogant or paternalistic, like she was the know-it-all American. E worried that her trainings might not be culturally relevant enough, or worse, that they could be offensive in some way. So, in her first few sessions, she tread very carefully. She was almost skittish. During one of our routine phone check-ins she told me that part way through one of the workshops, one of the women interrupted her. The woman could see that E was nervous and holding back. The woman said to her “E, we invited you here because you have skills that we want to learn. We see that you are worried about being culturally insensitive, and that is kind, but please, the best way to respect us is to respect our agency. Accept that we are intelligent enough to know for ourselves which aspects of your trainings we can use and which we need to reject. Trusting us is respecting us. Now please, teach us what you know!” E was floored. It never occurred to her, and yet it seemed so obvious: these were Afghan women, fighting for equality and human rights in the early 2000s in the midst of a war between the US and the Taliban, in the world’s most difficult place to be a woman. They were brave, tough, smart, determined, and skilled. They were perfectly able to discern what was culturally useful and what wasn’t from E’s workshops. They just needed E to realize that! Once she did, she was on fire. She became so important to that organization—and they to her—that she deferred her second year of graduate school and stayed more than a year past the scheduled end of her fellowship. She has continued to work in and on Afghanistan ever since.

We took away from that experience a lesson that we have never forgotten: While it is right and correct to be cautious and sometimes even deferential when doing community development work as an outsider, it is also right and correct to treat those with whom you interact as equals. That much seems obvious, no? But part of what that means is not assuming that you are some all-powerful influence who will accidentally lead them astray, and instead accepting that they, too, have agency and intelligence and often fierce resilience, and also that it is okay to disagree respectfully and remain congenial and even useful.