About five years ago I became involved in a charity project in a small remote village in Kenya. A team of us spent two weeks out there paying our own flights and contributing plenty of time and money of our own to the cause. As a follow up I went to a charities conference and found lots of small charities making lots of money for their "CEO"s who liked to view themselves as philanthropists but were no more (in my eyes) than fraudsters using the efforts of well meaning people to fill their own tables first, with whatever fell off the table going to the "cause". It's a moral dilemma if ever there was one. If you give, someone gets rich and someone gets hope; if you don't the fraudsters will find another way and the candle of hope is extinguished for someone. It's the good Samaritan story really. I still give but try to choose my charities to ensure the most goes to the cause.
