Helping the World through Humanitarian Aid

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On my 6th birthday, I remember I was surrounded by presents which could make me feel like being a princess. Then the next thing I remember is that my parents gave me a picture of a girl named Jasmine. She was wearing a red robe wrapped around her dark skinned skinny body. My parents explained that she was born in Bangladesh on the same date I was born, but because her parents were too poor to give her a birthday present. When I asked why they were too poor, my parents answered it was because of a cyclone that destroyed her house and community, so they suggested a brilliant idea to help her; we became her sponsor family through World Vision. Since then, on every birthday, my parents and I went shopping for my gift and her gift which made me feel good that I was helping somebody, but I would always wonder why her family was still poor and still did not have a house after all these years since the disaster? Humanitarian aid. It “represents a commitment to support vulnerable host populations that have experienced a sudden emergency, requiring ongoing assistance to maintain or improve their quality of life”(Kopinak 2013). When I first learned about humanitarian aid, I believed that it was the most meaningful thing to do as I could find a personal connection to Jasmine. However, in this course, I could find multiple reasons why Jasmine’s family still suffered.
When Sara Manos spoke about her adventurous experience in Africa which was motivated by her passionate heart to help the “poor” Africans, I was deeply sympathized. Becoming a humanitarian worker has been my dream throughout my life, so when Sara cynically called humanitarian aid “The Broken Aid Machine,” I was shocked. Though humanitarian aid is for one universal goal of protect...

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...ng relationships with local grassroots as they look for good balance between their roles. As ImageCat and Gem presented effectiveness of their teamwork, I saw hope in collaboration that can be done by different aspects of the society such as businesses, governments, scholars, and NGOs to save more lives. This course covered negative and even dark sides of disaster response industry, but now I am more hopeful than before. Since we diagnosed the root of brokenness of our aid machine, now we can treat it and improve the system. The responsibility of humanitarian works is to help victims or survivors to be able to hope again. If we cannot find hope in our brokenness, how are we supposed to help those in needs to hope? As long as disasters occur, humanitarian works will not be completed and continuously criticized. But they will never stop brining hope to those in needs.

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