Results key for charity

Updated: 2011-06-30 08:07

By Albert Cheng(HK Edition)

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Hong Kong is a city of loving residents where charity and benevolence are core values. Many business people and wealthy individuals not only donate to charitable causes in their own names but also have set up charity funds. Through these they are able to benefit education, health, culture and welfare/social services regularly, providing assistance to those in need.

The Community Care Fund (CCF), set up by the SAR government last year, is in fact born of the same philosophy and purpose, which is to provide a platform for wealthy individuals and enterprises to pitch in to help those who are not qualified to receive any welfare and/or financial assistance offered by the government and volunteer organizations but in real need of a helping hand.

The CCF may have been created to help ease growing resentment toward the wealthy as a result of the widening wealth gap in Hong Kong too; while business tycoons and corporate entities may have had political considerations when they decided to contribute to the fund. However, motives are not important in matters such as this and irrelevant because what really matters is that their donations actually produce visible results with positive social repercussions. Such charity funds and donations from wealthy individuals are meaningful and worth supporting as long as they really benefit the underprivileged members of society.

Anyone who gives part of his wealth to charitable causes has the right to decide which organization and/or fund will receive his donation and nobody else can find a good reason to question the motives behind the choices unless the announced donations never happen.

I, for one, can never agree with those who wantonly accuse others of hypocrisy simply because they don't like the organizations and/or charity funds chosen by the benefactors to receive their offerings, or because they suspect the recipients may steal from the donated funds, regardless whether the funds produces positive results or not.

The author is a current affairs commentator. This is a translation excerpted from his column in Hong Kong Economic Journal published on June 29.

(HK Edition 06/30/2011 page3)