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G’day,

I’m taking a bit of a break from Melbourne’s top end property market — currently in the Dolomites, rock climbing and rediscovering how best to use the next chapters of my life. But before I disappear further into the mountains, there’s something we wanted to share with you.

With all the talk about immigration, foreign aid, politics and the pressures facing all of us, sometimes you’ve just got to cut through it all and look at the individual human being. The individual child who simply needs some help.

Over the last year, Market News readers have helped more than 300 of the poorest children in the world. Since 2016, that’s over 1,500 children and more than a million dollars. Mostly in Tanzania, but now increasingly in Uganda, Ethiopia, and hopefully soon South Sudan and Nepal.

Help locally if that’s what you’re already doing, and if you’re doing plenty, please keep doing it — you know it works for you and your family just as much as it does for those you help. A real conundrum, hey.

Here are some more observations, not in any particular order.

Trust matters. People don’t mind helping — they mind not knowing. Did the money arrive? Did the surgery happen? Did the child recover? Did the hospital benefit? Did it make a difference?

Here is the evidence:
morechildsurgeries.com
proofofcare.org

Not a theory. Not a political statement. Not a criticism of governments, foreign aid or anybody else. Simply an observation that trust grows when care can be seen — because a group of ordinary Australians decided that a child they would never meet was still worth helping.

Mariam above is one example. We’ve met her, in her house, with her father, in Africa. She is very real. A few years ago she was dying from a tumour. Today she has a future. Reality. Not theory. Not politics. Reality.

What we’ve observed over the last few years is that surgery does much more than help a child — it helps a family. A parent who was caring full-time for a sick child can often return to work. A child who may have died or lived with disability can instead become a contributing member of their community. Local surgeons gain experience. Local hospitals become stronger. Health systems improve. And when health systems improve, communities become stronger and more self-reliant.

Ironically, one of the best long-term ways of reducing dependence on foreign aid is helping local people build local capacity. That is exactly what these programs do.

Wars affect the whole world, but they affect the extreme poor far more, through huge increases in the basic cost of food they could barely afford in the first place.

The world seems less interested in foreign aid than it was ten years ago — less interested than even a year ago. Whether that’s right or wrong is for others to debate. But the children are still there. The need is still there. The surgeons are still there. And the opportunity to help is still there.

We’ve seen teenagers living with disabilities that could have been fixed easily when they were young, but weren’t. That’s the proof: if you don’t help a child now, nobody else will.

Not everybody can change the world. But anybody can help change one child’s world — and in doing so, perhaps change a family’s future, strengthen a hospital, and contribute to a stronger community.

As we approach tax time, we’d like to ask you to consider helping again. Approximately $750 funds a life-changing operation. Some donors give more, like $25,000, to help set up a small children’s wing.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation through the Rotary button below.

Before we finish, we’d like to say thank you. Thank you to Toby, a competitor of ours, who recently donated several thousand dollars. Thank you to a number of Market News readers who have quietly contributed over the years. Thank you to clients who, even when a property transaction didn’t work out, still made substantial donations, often in the thousands of dollars.

Thank you to friends who we told not to worry about the fee — and who instead donated the full amount to the child surgeries program anyway. And thank you to people we’ve never met, who simply saw a child in need and decided to do something. Every one of those donations matters.

If you’d like to help, please click the Rotary donation button below. The process is simple, you’ll receive a tax-deductible receipt, and every dollar goes towards helping children who otherwise would not receive the surgery they desperately need.

As always, thank you for reading Market News. And thank you for caring.

Sim, Kathy and Mal
James Buyer Advocates, since 2002