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| Eight Stages Of Giving - Your Guide To Wealth |
By:
Masami Sato |
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A new development is revolutionizing many lives in the
hamlets of India by bringing brightness where there used to
be blackness.
An article was published in The New York Times named, "Husk
Power for India". Current, which is routinely available in
the lives of most in industrialized nations, is an
unimaginable luxury in out-of-the-way corners of emerging
countries. What was once fodder for cattle is now used to
produce current - rice husks.
Being brought up in the pastoral Bihar State, Manoj Sinha
knew what it was like to be without light at night. Being an
engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the competence to
bring a lifelong idea to fruition. He led the creation of
his power generation equipment from rice husks and other
wastes from farms and now he sells power to rural areas
across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social industrialist because
he feels entrepreneurship is a way out for important
problems of the society. "Business leaders must realise that
the world's poor need investments more than handouts," he
says, adding, "these are customers, not victims."
The article inspired me to think about giving in a different
way leading me to ask myself, "what is the most effective
form of giving?" Is it education, commercial activity or
disaster relief? There are so many ways to make a
difference. One way of giving can seem more effective or
sustainable than other ways depending on the way it is
expressed, looked at or implemented.
I then came to identify there were eight sections to giving
as a form to perceive this. So, let me outline the eight
methods; which in effect are often 'phases' of giving as
well.
Stage one: Necessity - saving and helping others who are
afflicted by natural catastrophe, contagious diseases or
other unmanageable conditions.
Stage two: Reprieve - providing reprieve from long-standing
malnutrition, penury, illnesses, handicaps or inequity which
otherwise would prolong or get worsened because of the lack
of perception, edification or resources.
Stage three: Healing and protection - mentally, physically
and emotionally. Many people carry traumas that may be
invisible but severely limiting their lives. Giving the
healing to release the deep-rooted pain creates more
opportunities for them while giving suitable protection
gives them a sense of security.
Phase four: Edification - giving better edification,
awareness and skill imparting to create empowered and
innovative solutions to generating resources while helping
people to discover their exclusive talent to succeed.
Stage five: Inspired investment - giving a help, capital or
resources to those who have great talent to alter the
situation. This gets used many times as the resources become
more and passed on to other people who again produce more
out of the prospects given.
Phase six: Maintainability - working collectively involving
the people in the local surroundings, creating maintainable
society - ecologically and communally.
Stage seven: Empowerment - sanctioning and influencing the
people to set free their true capability and drive to make a
difference. In this group of offering, the aim of offering
changes from 'giving to those who are in need' to 'giving
people an opening to give to others' and to the whole group.
Stage eight: Loving - just doing whatever we feel to do to
love and care for others. No strategy or expected outcome
exists in this stage of giving. 'Giving' does not even exist
here in the traditional sense of the word, as there is no
sense of possession or judgment or desire to change
anything. This is where we do not even have to think about
anything, we give as a part of our own joyful experience.
What we also find is that at each of these eight stages of
giving there are different things that the giver receives.
One: Sense of connection
Two: Sense of contentment
Three: reprieve from ache (our own)
Four: Gratitude for our own knowledge, skills and
circumstances
Five: Long-term sense of contribution and satisfaction for
our own life
Six: Improved atmosphere for our own life and for the lives
of all those we value and cherish
Seven: Soul fulfilling inspiration and dedication to our own
purpose
Eight: Care
Giving has many levels and experiences depending on the
giver and the receiver. And the 'stages' do not describe
which one is more important than the other. All are
necessary.
I was lucky to have an experience early in 2008 while
journeying with a group of devoted entrepreneurs across
India to see how we could be more productive in our helping.
I was particularly happy to have one outstanding encounter
that led me to think about what 'actual giving' really
meant.
We were in a little town one day. Four of us had just booked
a taxi to take us to another town nearby. We negotiated with
the driver carefully as our hotel staff had warned us in
advance about the rip-off we might experience seeing we were
not local.
We chose to stop in front of the local train station for a
short interval en route to the town. While the others went
to use restrooms, I struck up a conversation with the driver
of the taxi, standing nearby. With his limited English
vocabulary and a smiling face that showed his black front
teeth to advantage, he told me that he lived in the
outskirts of the town and that he had a young wife and two
kids who attended the local school - I began to feel a
relationship with him.
I congratulated him on having such a loving family and told
him that I also had two children similar ages to his. When
the others returned he spontaneously invited us to come to
his house for lunch. I thought it was just a friendly
courtesy he wanted to show at first. However, after dropping
us off in the town centre, he insisted that he would wait
for us until we finished our exploration in town. And he
did. I was actually quite surprised to see him still waiting
at the side of the road standing next to his taxi more than
hour later. We jumped back into the taxi and he zoomed off
up the road to where his family lived.
When we arrived we were actually quite shocked to see how he
was living. It was almost like the same condition (if not
worse) to the lifestyle of people living in slums we had
visited previously. From the nice new taxi he was driving,
who could have imagined
As he reached the narrow open street in between shanties
that were made with rough concrete blocks and mud walls, we
felt guilty about accepting his invitation. For a brief
moment I was nonplussed. "How could I accept the hospitality
of this man who didn't seem to have anything at all and I
didn't even bring any gift that could be a help to his
family", I told myself.
As we walked into his house, we saw a pan and small stove on
the mud floor. His very shy wife nodded blushing in surprise
and disappeared into the small storeroom (a cupboard size)
next to it. As I looked in, I saw the next-door neighbours
handing over some teacups to his wife over the crumbled
concrete fence. They didn't even have extra teacups in their
house. There was only one small room fitted out with one
single bed and an old galvanised chest next to it.
The driver hastily drew out three hand-woven mats from the
trunk and spread them out on whatever little space there was
on the mud floor and put one on the bed.
Steaming cups of tea and hot snacks arrived soon. Both his
kids as well as kids from the neighbouring houses came to
see us and remained at the doorway. The six of us could just
squeeze into the tiny room. I was curious to know where his
children were sleeping. I thought maybe they had another
space somewhere. To my astonishment, he just pointed at the
chest and said with his happy smile that it was their bed.
He cheerfully informed us that he was a dancing expert of
the area and pointed at the medals displayed on the recess
above his bed. Bent on showing us his dancing skills he at
once ran outside. From some place music started coming into
the tiny room. He has no arrangement for music in the house,
it was flowing in from outside. I wondered where it came
from till I saw him bringing his taxi in reverse to the back
wall of his house with the doors open and music flowing in
from the high volume car radio!
The time quickly passed (dancing together and having more
cups of tea) and it was finally time to say thank you for
their great hospitality and head on our way. As we stood up
to leave and thank him and his wife, he reached to the best
looking rug on the bed, rolled it up and handed it to us. It
was one of the only few things he had. I could not believe
he offered it to us.
We all respectfully refused his gift and came out saying
goodbye to everyone waving at us. We got perplexed about
this whole thing. Should we have offered some cash to the
family as they obviously had limited means? Should we have
agreed to take his wonderful gift?
As I was thinking about this awe-inspiring experience after
a few days, I considered our begging off his gift. He looked
crest-fallen that we didn't accept the gift. It wasn't only
the rejecting of the gift that remained in my mind.
I realised that the sense of discomfort I felt was actually
coming from perceiving him as less fortunate. I was thinking
that I couldn't possibly take anything from someone who had
so little.
But did he actually have modest means? Maybe he had other
things - a lot more.
Maybe the perfect gift we could have given him then was to
accept his gift in total surrender and gratefulness.
All actions of gifting and getting are essential for us to
fill our world with plenty and contentment equally for both
giver and getter. We can begin doing this instead of
assessing and defending one over the other. The perfect act
of gifting and getting needs no further clarification.
Manoj Sinha's words echo in my mind once again, "these are
customers, not victims." I can imagine the smiling faces of
the villagers who are now proud to have electricity in their
villages and the children who now can read books and learn
in their homes at night.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your
business using Cause Marketing. You are welcome to reprint
this article - but get your own unique content version here. |
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