Traditional Philanthropy: Tim Barrus, NYT
I run a safe House for boys at-risk. Many self-identify as gay. Many have HIV, and sex work is always lurking somewhere in the background. If you can see past superficial issues of morality, you confront the beast, which is an awesome stigma.
Add into this toxic mix: addiction, suicidal adolescents, overt racism, disease, entrenched loneliness, and not-in-my-backyard institutionalized.
And rape.
Even boys.
Traditional philanthropy does not take risk. It is risk aversive.
Smaller philanthropy is more relevant.
Traditional philanthropy just runs with their tail between their legs. Moving capital? What capital. No one in philanthropy goes anywhere near the word hate. But this is hate. The government is as irrelevant as philanthropy. One size fits all just doesn’t work. This paradigm insinuates a bigger fantasy bang for the buck. Everyone has a great website.
That philanthropy only serves the entities that created them is maybe news to you, but not to me.
Example: While these boys were alone out there, often homeless, government’s response to them, a reaching out to get tested for HIV, was the production of CDC posters with stick figures lecturing. Example: It takes nine months to get an appointment with the nearest public health clinic which is over a hundred miles away. How do they get there. How can they wait nine months. Follow up is a joke. The class gap between who the kid is and who the philanthropy giver is remains too big to cross.
How do you know school failure, the pain of sexual exploitation, sleeping, eating in dumpsters like starving animals. You don’t. You never will.