Charity at workplace
Help and forget that you helped
The dictionary meaning of charity is “The voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need”. Please note that it's typically in the form of money. We may say that typically its in the form of basic needs like food and clothing as well. I was pondering over the first and the most important sentence “voluntarily giving of help” and how this is unknowingly done in our life daily. I came up with the understanding that needy can be anyone at any level. A person who is self sufficient with basic needs might be a needy is some other aspect.
I broadly classify charity as : Basic and Self Sufficient. Aforementioned Basic charity is what we usually do and are aware of. Self Sufficient charity is about helping someone who is self sufficient with respect to basic needs and is need in some other aspect. Another aspect in charity is the needy. I would say that everyone is needy in some way or the other. A fresher who joined the job recently might be a needy who needs help in using his learnt skills or acquiring news skills. Needy can be classified as : One who wants to be independent and other who wants to be dependent. Consider a scenario that new team members were on-boarded and they need help in understanding the latest technology. Some team members get the initial kick-off from the seniors and then learn on their own are the ones who want to be independent and the ones who learnt only what was told by their seniors and did not learn other aspects of technology then they are always dependent on their seniors.
Look around, everyone is needy in some way or the other. We are simply focusing on only one level of the need. Hence overall we empathise those set of people. Hence if you find a person is need of some help and you somehow empathise that person then don't forget to help. Few people do it for some corporate social responsibility and some do it out of empathy. Now that we have understood all these things, I would suggest that we need not always give away money, food or clothing as charity. Consider a fact that a person who is working in IT industry and knows about software development. He can create tools for others who need it and give it away for free. Its a charity because the person who needs the tool cannot afford and ( or ) make it and you have used user time and skill not against any favour or monetary benefit.