<p>To dragonmom: Yes, the house sold (reportedly for $1.8 million). Yes, the parents donated ($800,000) to the country of Ghana through The Hunger Project.</p>
<p>To my detractors:</p>
<p>I don’t think charity is disgusting. I do think the Salwens are disgusting. It disgusts me that they chose to send their charitable donation overseas when there is poverty and hunger right in their own backyard. It disgusts me that the Salwens would then run to the mass media for their self-aggrandizing “fifteen minutes of fame.” It disgusts me that the Salwens will subsequently benefit from a large tax deduction–tax revenue which would have helped support poor and hungry Georgians and Americans.</p>
<p>I don’t care if the Salwens live in a 6,500 square foot “mansion,” a 3,000 square foot house, or a 500 square foot apartment. The Salwen parents have enough money to be able to choose how and where they and their children will live, so however and wherever they choose to live is their business. Whatever the Salwen parents choose to do with their money (save it, spend it, donate it) is also their business. However, given that the Salwens–both parents and children–have chosen to splash themselves across the mass media, they have also chosen to expose themselves to public opinion.</p>
<p>I am a member of the public, and I have an opinion–an unfavorable opinion of the Salwens.</p>
<p>Since I first posted to this thread, I have done some additional research on The Hunger Project, Ghana, hunger in America, and hunger in Georgia. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:</p>
<p>1) The Hunger Project is a California-incorporated nonprofit. Although it aggressively fundraises in many countries (including in the U.S.) it implements programs only in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The Hunger Project was co-founded in 1977 by est guru Werner Erhard (John Paul Rosenberg), who established The Hunger Project’s “principles and abstracts” to reflect and promote his personal worldview. In response to escalating public criticism of The Hunger Project’s controversial foundational principles and alleged financial mismanagement, major charities such as CUSA, Oxfam, and the Peace Corps were reported to have disassociated themselves from The Hunger Project in the early 1980s.</p>
<p>2) Since 2001, Ghana’s GDP has risen from $3 billion to $16 billion; it is now (comparatively) the fifth wealthiest country in the world. Moreover, current development of recently discovered Ghanaian offshore oil fields will enable Ghana to produce a projected maximum of 250,000 barrels of oil per day by 2010-12, generating projected minimum revenues equivalent to $1.2 billion to $2.5 billion U.S. dollars. (The bottom line: Ghana can afford to take care of its own.)</p>
<p>3) According to the USDA Economic Research Service’s November 2007 report ERR 49 entitled, “Household Food Security in the United States,” from 2004-06, 35.5 million Americans lived in “food insecure” households. 10.9 percent of all American households experienced food insecurity (defined as “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways”), and 4.0 percent of those households also experienced hunger (defined as “uneasy or painful sensation caused by a lack of food; the recurrent and involuntary lack of access to food”).</p>
<p>4) According to the USDA report cited above, 12.6 percent of all Georgia households experienced food insecurity, and 5.0 percent those households also experienced hunger.</p>
<p>By contrast, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports that Ghana’s 2001-03 population undernourishment (defined as “not having access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”) rate was just 12 percent, and was dramatically decreasing.</p>
<p>The Salwens made a judgment call; they considered “undernourished” Ghanaians to be more deserving of a sizeable charitable donation than the higher percentage of their “food insecure” and “hungry” fellow Georgians. They chose to send their donation overseas rather than contribute nationally, or even locally–for example, to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, where Hannah Salwen and her mother volunteer, or to Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, for which Hannah’s father sits on the board of directors. </p>
<p>I agree with the old saying (first attributed to Roman playwright Terence), “Charity begins at home.” For me, “home” is first myself and my immediate family, then my close friends and extended family, then my personal acquaintances and immediate neighbors, then the other residents of my neighborhood, then the residents of my community, then the residents my state, then the citizens of my country, and then–and only then–the citizens of foreign countries. I consider charity to be a personal act; I will give money to a needy individual I encounter on the street, but I will not donate money to any organization which is unable or unwilling to help that same needy individual. I also consider charity to be a profoundly private act; I donate to individuals and to organizations anonymously, without the personal inclination or the emotional need to publicly brag about–and to receive public recognition of–my generosity.</p>
<p>The Salwens appear to be among those people who find it less socially disturbing, more emotionally gratifying, and somehow more “politically correct” to donate to the “invisible” poor (Ghanaians) rather than to the “visible” poor (the homeless and hungry of Atlanta). Poverty and hunger are indeed worldwide problems–problems many Americans currently share. Poor Americans are undeniably visible, and so, I am disgusted by Americans like the Salwens, who close their charitable eyes to their fellow Americans while extending their charitable hands to foreigners, and who then aggressively solicit American admiration and applause for their “social responsibility and self-sacrifice.”</p>
<p>I am old enough to remember former president Lyndon B. Johnson’s gutsy War on Poverty. America is still fighting–and, in my opinion, rapidly losing–that war. Americans such as the Salwens, for whom charity does not begin “at home,” and/or by whom America is not considered “home”–disgust me.</p>