Stories about aid
4 Buddhist wisdom stories about aid from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Floating houses on the Bangladesh DeltaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Rather than relocating people from the flood-prone Bangladesh Delta — their home and livelihood — a relief organisation Brahm read about built floating houses that rise with the…
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And I remember reading, again, there are some very wise relief relief organizations in the Bangladesh Delta which often gets flooded. Actually it was supposed to be a cyclone or so in the newspapers. Was it yesterday? I hope it didn't sort of cause too much damage in Bangladesh in Dhaka. It was supposed to be, I read in the newspapers on the aircraft, nothing much else to do there. And so this was going in that direction. But a great organization was reading, "No, we will not move the people on the Delta. This is their home. They've grown up there. This is their livelihood." So instead they built floating houses for them. So when the storms came, the houses would just float up. When the storms subsided, they would float down again. Brilliant idea. Instead of mooring things to the ground, they're using wisdom leads to innovation.
- Oxfam charged for the corrugated ironStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a new monk Ajahn Brahm read about Oxfam's earthquake relief in Guatemala: instead of giving corrugated iron free, they charged about 5% of cost. Critics called it wrong for an…
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an example of that which I I read when I was first a monk was uh a case of an organization which you may know, it's one of the biggest NGO aid organizations, Oxfam, who went into this the country of Guatemala uh during uh after some earthquakes which devastated uh many areas in Guatemala. And the notable uh exception to their relief effort was that they charged the people who received corrugated iron to to build their new houses. They charged them a small fee to buy the corrugated iron. And many people criticized them. "You're an aid organization. You should be giving these things out for free." But the fellow in charge of this group in Guatemala said, "No, listen." And they were charging maybe 5% of the the cost price you know, of the corrugated iron, so they could build shelters for themselves in the devastated areas. They're charging 5%, which was just a a token for what the thing really cost. But the man in charge said, "We don't just want to build them houses. We want to rebuild their self-esteem as well. So the people who rebuild their houses with a tiny bit of money, which doesn't know come nowhere near to covering even 5% of the costs, is so that when they've built their house, they can feel they have actually contributed
- The monk who built a women's prisonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A famous Thai monk, already housed, spent surplus donations on schools and hospitals — and, after visiting Bangkok's inhumane women's prison, on designing and building a humane…
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There's only one person I know who was actually a monk, a very famous monk in Thailand. He got lots of donations. Instead of losing them to build his monastery, yeah, he had a monastery, had enough rooms there. So any extra donations, he used to build schools or hospitals in Thailand. One amazing thing I was told he did, that with the donations he received, you know, he wanted to help society, so he built a women's prison in Bangkok. Now that is aid. And I thought, "What are you doing?" I can understand collecting money to build a hospital or a school or an orphanage, but a prison? And when actually I investigated it, what happened, he'd visited someone in a women's prison in Bangkok. Saw how inhumane it was. Just how harsh conditions there were for women who'd broken some law and been sentenced to jail. He thought, "There's no way I'm going to convince the government to increase or improve the facilities. So, I'm going to improve the facilities myself." Collecting some money to design and build a humane hospital a humane prison for women in Thailand. Knowing that they will get sentenced. If they're going to get sentenced, I need to give them a good jail, a humane jail. Where they can have decent facilities. And maybe a little bit of compassion to the prisoners will mean that they realize they are cared for somewhere along the line. There is some monk somewhere in Thailand who's responsible to have had them having a clean toilet and a bed to sleep on. And I thought, "What innovative aid that was?" Someone thinking outside the box. When I heard that, I thought, "Wow, what a great way." So, maybe we can have a little fundraiser to raise funds for a women's prison here in Perth. Maybe later later on we can do things like that.
- When we had no hospital, people were so healthyStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: One of Ajahn Chah's chief disciples (interviewed in a BBC documentary; Brahm briefly confuses him with another monk who first went to see Chah) says honestly: when he was young…
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And I remember this other guy. He was one of Ajahn Chah's chief disciples. And he said something which really shocked me, but you know, he was very honest. And he was actually one of the people interviewed in the BBC documentary about Ajahn Chah many years ago. He said, "When I was young, we didn't have any hospital and people were so healthy. Now we have a hospital, there's so many sick people." Now that was fascinating comment because I trusted this fellow. He was very honest. And he was putting a window sort of into the past and into the the present. He's very, very old man, but very trustworthy. He was one of these guys he first went to see Ajahn Chah. No, so that's another guy. I'm getting him mixed up. But this was a very, very honest fellow, a very good man, one of the chief disciples. So I really trust, you know, what he said there because I was there in the very early days. But it was saying that sometimes development, what we think they need, that is one of the problems with with aid, with compassion.