Posted by pancho from ? (204.120.48.3) on Thursday, July 18, 2002 at 4:47PM :
I know this always seems to be the wrong time...but when is the right time to point out that this penchant we have of rushing out only when motivated by an extreme emergency, makes everything harder on everyone. We all want to help Lina live...and however it plays out...we will be exhausted at the end of it and need to pull back...till the next crisis, and you know it will come. In fact, had Lina's family not been able to get this far, we might never have known about her...as so many many Assyrians don't know now. And who knows how many more Lina Nissan's there are out there at this same time?
No effective work for the long haul can be achieved like this...and what happens in time, what has already happened, is that people reach the limit of their "care" factor. They see these problems as endless and they begin to resent the constant appeals...as if we are incapable of doing more than begging periodically.
That is a failure of leadership...and vision...something not a one of the leaders on the scene has now. We could easily create the kind of agency others have and seek government grants...we could form a list of names...people willing to give only $10.00 a year, or twenty, into a fund that for the first five years might never have more than $500 in it. But we have to begin SOMEWHERE.
We cannot sustain an effort like this...and you all know it. All that will happen will be that each crop of highly motivated individuals will exhaust themselves...to get burned out and leave the field to another new group of eager and motivated individuals.
It's starting over each and every time. We need to begin a fledgling "system"...one we can add to year in and year out. Ten of us sending ten bucks to a fund....is $100 that doesn't exist anywhere now. What if that $100 could be used to benefit ONE Assyrian child in north Iraq? Just one. We could build on that...we could contact others and tell them, "look what $100 did...join us."
We have the talent, the resources, the expertise. So many people at least as capable as we are, achieve so much more because they start at the beginning...they build a structure they add onto, instead of starting over each time...like that primitive tribe that had no language in place to teach each generation but must be content to have each generation learn from scratch...like animals.
-- pancho
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