What is charity and what is the importance of charity in our Society

Recently, a story was published on the online news portal about Katherine, who works in the kitchen during the week at a biopharmaceutical company in Cambridge, earning $8.25 an hour from a food service agency to make sandwiches and salads for meetings. On the weekends, she works for two temp agencies, often cooking at Suffolk Downs or catering events on college campuses. What is charity and what is the importance of charity in our Society.

Her situation is fragile. She fears getting fired, and getting in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for earnings she doesn’t report. When work is plentiful, Katherine chips away some dollars she owes for past utility bills and tries to set some money aside. When work is scarce, she gets food stamps and stocks up on canned goods, pasta, and rice from church food pantries. Katherine was married at 18, but she said her husband was abusive, and she fled to Boston at the time she was pregnant!

Katherine is not alone. About forty million Americans live in poverty right now. The United States has the highest child poverty rates which are 25% compared to other countries in the developed world. Then there are the extremely poor who live on less than $2 per day per and don’t have access to basic human services such as sanitation, shelter, education, and healthcare. Their situation gets even more poignant as they cannot find work and have already used up their five-year lifetime limit on assistance, therefore, they do not qualify for any other programs, ultimately leading to an insecure and vulnerable life.

What is Charity:

The charity’s aims include the prevention or relief of poverty, war or natural calamity, or the advancement of the education or healthcare system, or providing assistance to orphans or the elders.It has to be established exclusively for that it is known as a public benefit which means its only purpose must be charitable: it can’t also have the aim of making a profit or doing something that isn’t defined as charitable.

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At the end of the day, charities can’t make profits and all the money they raise has to go back towards achieving their aims. A charity can’t have owners or shareholders who benefit from it. Charities bring together people who care about a cause so that they can make a difference. Whatever it is that you care about, there will be a charity working on it.

Charities help in lots of different ways, by providing direct help, giving information, or raising awareness of an issue. Lots of charities do a mix of these things.

 The Importance of Charity in our Society:

The Washington Post reported in December 2017, that extreme poverty also is a feature of one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world, the USA.Findings have documented homelessness, unsafe sanitation and sewage disposal practices, as well as police surveillance, criminalization, and harassment of the poor. The rise in poverty, they found, disproportionately affects people of color and women, but also large swaths of white Americans. The report concluded that the pervasiveness of poverty and inequality are shockingly at odds with the United States immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights. It’s now vivid that, we don’t live in a perfect world, and there’s never going to be a perfect time to give but there are always people out there in need of help.

National Council of Non-Profits reported Nonprofits are significant contributors to the American economy.  In the United States, the nonprofit sector contributed $878 billion to the economy in 2012, or about 5.4% of the nation’s GDP.

Nonprofits are also one of the greatest sources of employment across the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nonprofit sector employs 11.4 million people that’s 10.2 % of the American workforce!

Extreme poverty is one of the most pressing issues of our age. It is the source of much of the world’s suffering and makes mere survival into an unbearable. So charity is a necessity and not an option. Bounty is said to receive a part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed. The act of compassion or generosity can be big or small but their echoes are endless.