STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

The subjects of our conversation
IKE ‘KA IKING’ SENERES

MANILA -- This is a continuation of my previous column, where I invited everyone to have a conversation with me, about giving charity to others, and about nation building. It may be difficult to establish a connection between these two topics, but suffice it to say that development is all about giving access to public services, and giving access to others as a way of sharing is both an act of charity aside from contributing to nation building.

I will leave it up to the Circles and Clubs to choose their own beneficiary targets. As a matter of fact, they could also choose needy individuals as their direct beneficiary targets. Preferably however, it would be best for them to provide assistance in any of the five main programs, so that we could support them at the national level.

It is part of human nature not to talk about our own acts of charity, which we usually keep close to our hearts. This is not a problem, but since we need to hear about what each of us is doing, we should encourage the members of the Circles to talk about what they are doing as a group, or what their friends are doing as individuals.

As part of our conversations, I am going to talk about individuals who have come to me for help. I will also talk about groups that apparently need help, even if they have not approached me. I will list down these individuals and groups, and the members of the Circles could choose which ones they would want to help.

In order to be able to keep track of all our conversations, let us all agree to post our comments in the following website, listed below. In order to limit the number of conversations in our website, let us avoid talking about our plans to help. Instead, I would encourage the Circles to talk about their experiences and the problems they are encountering in implementing their own programs.

The internet is already full of loose talk; let us be different by balancing our talks with our actions. In a manner of speaking, our public services do need the charity of our citizens, because of the usual reason that government budgets are always lacking, not to mention that these public funds often fall victim to graft and corruption, thus leaving very little to actual public expenditures.

Charity to persons is almost always urgent in nature, and would always need urgent actions. While it is good to respond to subjective needs, let us balance our actions with objective purposes, and we could do that by helping our local institutions with their physical and material needs, that way we could help more people as they are able to service more people in need.

Examples of local institutions are the local governments, the court systems, the prosecution offices, the police units and the health services in your own villages.

Examples of infrastructures are roads, bridges, buildings and other physical facilities, including school buildings and hospitals, among others. It’s not a very easy goal, but I am now trying to integrate what I am doing in my TV show, in my website and in my syndicated column. The purpose of my TV show is to bring out “The news behind the news”, but since I am a practitioner of developmental journalism, I always try to pick issues that have something to do with national development and nation building.

Generally speaking, we could say that the purpose of mass media is to inform the public about issues and events. Practitioners of developmental journalism however would like to also use the mass media as a tool for national development. The challenge I think is to make the mass media participatory, so that readers, viewers and listeners could get involved in issues, not only to comment, but also to do something to solve national needs and problems.

I know that I could not convince everyone to do something for others or for our country, but I am sure that there are many individuals out there who would like to do something, or are in fact doing something already. Let these be the subject of our conversations, what we do as individuals or as groups of friends who are doing something for others and for our country.

Email me at iseneres@yahoo.com or text me at +639293605140. Watch my TV show “KA IKING LIVE” every Friday from 930 to 1030 PM in Destiny Cable Channel 3 (Windows Media Player MMS://202.128.41.99/gnn). Visit my website http://intercharity.blogs.friendster.com. Form your own Intercharity Circle and let us build our Nation as one people.