Chronicle & Archive: My dear parents, I discovered the charity business

"Five percent of the bar's profits will go to a local charity." “Our establishment supports a humanitarian programme in the Siem Reap region.” “All profits from this initiative will go to a Cambodian charity.” “Our “Institute of Hospitality” is dedicated to providing training to the hotel staff”...

Committed to supporting humanitarian work

It has been many years since bistroes, restaurants, travel agencies, and especially hotels have declared themselves committed to supporting any humanitarian work. Even personal initiatives, albeit anodine, cannot be done without being, today, linked to a project of solidarity. It's in the air of time.

A race in the temples of Angkor? We're running for the kids! A bike trip to the countryside turns into a visit to orphanages and is punctuated with unexpected stops in randomly “selected” poor families. Any alcoholic party? We drink for liver cancer! Everything is necessarily organised for a humanitarian cause. So, you're gonna tell me? That's better, isn't it? Would it be bad to do good?

Impulses of spontaneous generosity

Nevertheless, there is something like a little bit that disturbs in these impulses of spontaneous generosity. Doing good, in itself, is not a bad thing. No point at all. What is surprising is not the good, but the advertising that is made of it. And it seems that hypocrisy, this contagious evil, is associated with stupidity in these zeal for charity.

This tiny act of very Jewish-Christian benevolence is here altered by a good touch of pride. The old Matthew of the Gospel must turn in his grave, but he says: “Beware not of showing your righteousness before men, that you may be noticed by them; when you give alms, do not go and cleanse it, as do the hypocrites.” Unfortunately!

Commercial asset

Even more vicious than pride, the promotion of charity has too often become a commercial asset, a means of making figures. Especially in Siem Reap, where we no longer count the number of restaurants that display, above and above, the social reason: “non-profit establishment”. And it works! How to criticize an institution where people

Business Argument

An international financial institute, whose name we will silence here for fear of advertising it, once set up a project for private investors going in the same direction and whose hypocrisy was the red thread. “What are you doing to help communities?” was the theme.

And experts traveled from hotel to hotel to meet the managers to title their sensitive fiber. “You who make money on the back of poor people, what are you doing for this country? Did you know that if your institution supports a charity, whatever it is, you can also use it as a commercial argument? Tourists are thrilled with this kind of consideration. And you're doing a good thing," said a guy in a tie suit who must have been an encyclopedia seller in a previous life.

Help yourself, but announce that it is the others that you help, it is in the air of time. Like organic or fair trade, sustainable tourism is fashionable. Because the split between “bad investors” and “good humanitarian” is still topical, this program was meant to give some humanity to the bad guys.

Charity business

In itself, however, it is a good thing to engage in a cause, to support an organization’s program, to give some books and textbooks to a school; to pay for English or French courses to orphans. No one will deny it. It is still necessary for these goods or money to be effectively distributed.

To use some of the profits of a successful business for humanitarian work is, in Cambodia more than anywhere else, quite natural and should even flow from the source. What is not necessarily so, however, is to turn this action into a promotional argument without total transparency.

Charity has too often become a real business. For the best of times. For the worst, often...

Frédéric Amat