Sam Jones NY Times Editorial Presentation

An African's Message For America by Cassandra Herman- NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/opinion/an-africans-message-for-america.html?contentCollection=opinion&action=click&module=NextInCollection&region=Footer&pgtype=articl

My editorial is called ‘An African’s Message for America’ by Cassandra Herman and came out in the New York Times on 5, January 2015. The article supports and elaborates on the opinion and beliefs of a Kenyan political activist called Boniface Mwangi who recently visited Duke University to speak to students about volunteer work in the community. Mwangi’s opinion is that volunteer work in other countries has become a bit of a rite-of-passage for affluent white teenagers and young people. That many people spend lots of money to venture off to different, so-called, ‘third-world country’, to try and build things or educate people or help people, when actually the people that most are benefitting from the experience is them. In the end it usually costs so much to volunteer, when teenage kids really aren’t very useful. Sending money to a community is a much better use of your money if your goal is to help a community. Because if it’s all about the passion for helping people, there are plenty of people locally who could benefit a great deal more from your donations to a community-run program in a place than an African child who gets ‘taught’ by you for a week and then never sees you again would. 

Another thing Mwangi says is that Americans often have the idea that places like Africa and South America and Asia need to be saved by them, the rich white people. Actually Africans doesn’t need Americans to save them, but lots of Americans need Americans. There are 2.5 million Homeless children in the USA and child poverty is at the highest it’s been in 20 years. Even though it doesn’t seem as heroic, community help is needed and beneficial, more beneficial probably because it sets up connections within the community whereas that last. Young Americans flying over for week-long trips to meet children and teach them, doesn’t do very much except potentially diminish or supplant local-grown initiatives and makes us look as though we think we’re superior.

I definitely agree with the author of the article and with Boniface Mwangi’s points. I strongly believe that many a rich, white person these days will fly off to another country for an adventure and leave with a good moral idea of herself/himself and a check-mark for her/his college application. And I don’t mean to say that community service trips are bad, because I think it’s great kids want to volunteer to help other people out, I just wish people who went on them were not beforehand saying “I’m so excited to go to Africa, I’m so excited to go to Ecuador!” but instead, “I’m so excited to help people!” And even if that was the case, I think that sending money is a better way to do that.