Child Haven's Ethical Dilemmas

April 6, 2008

Introduction:

Age 82 in 2008, Fred, who is an ordained Unitarian Reverend lives in Maxville -- a small rural community in eastern Ontario.  Together with his wife Bonnie they raised 21 boys and girls from 11 countries, most of them in the Far East.

Fred is also a very active Unitarian.  One of the things that impressed me as I learned about him was his strong support for the rights of gays in Canada where he appeared before a standing committee of Parliament to support those rights.  He is also very active in the movement to provide sanctuary to immigrants at First Unitarian Ottawa.  In late 1984, when many of their kids were grown up and on their own, Bonnie & Fred turned their thoughts to the destitute children of India and were key drivers in the founding of a nonsectarian nonprofit organization called Child Haven.  

Child Haven Overview:

Inspired by the ideals and philosophy of Ghandi, Child Haven International is a registered charity that assists children and women in 4 countries, who are in need of food, education, health care, shelter and clothing, emotional and moral support. Child Haven has five homes in India, one in Nepal, one in Tibet and one in Bangladesh. The homes accept children who are disabled, parentless, or from socially disadvantaged situations.  Destitute children from birth to six years of age are referred by local social welfare agencies.  

Girls and boys are treated equally, and without regard to race, caste, colour, religion or culture. Living is simple and meals are vegetarian. Child Haven tries not to Westernize the children, but rather attempt to raise them according to the highest ideals of their own cultures, respecting the heritage of each child, whether Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist, secular or other.  Child Haven’s Homes provide full care through high school, and then provide vocational training so that each child can enter the local society as a self-sufficient adult.   The Home in Nepal is currently fundraising to install a library and we have sold books at UCG to support that work.  

For more information on Child Haven go to: http://www.childhaven.ca/
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Ralph Kiner, home run king for the Pittsburgh Pirates, once told the story about the early days of his marriage to tennis star Nancy Chaffee.  

“When I married Nancy,” Ralph said, “I vowed I’ld beat her at tennis someday.  After six months, she beat me 6-2.  After a year, she beat me 6-4.  Then after a year and a half it happened.  She had a bad day and I had a good one.  I beat her 7-6.  Kiner was asked if his wife had been sick on that day.  

“of course not!” he said.  “But – well – she was eight months pregnant.”

Some women continually outshine their husbands.  My wife Bonnie is just such a woman.  She is always busy and has a great point of view on life.  

When we’re in the car, she drives and I sit on her deaf ear (the right one).  It works for us.  She hates to waste time, and when we’re stopped at a light she’ll start rummaging in her purse or making notes.  I protested that one day and said she was holding up traffic and she told me “Fred, don’t worry…there’s always some nice gentleman who lets me know when the light has turned green.”  

On her last trip, Bonnie stopped and made her usual visit at our small orphanage in Tibet.  She left Lhasa on March 8, 2008.  On March 10th, the demonstrations started.  Unaware of anything happening, she got out by the skin of her teeth.   

We first organized as a branch of the Open Door Society in the basement of lakeshore Unitarian Church in around 1969.  We changed our name to Families for Children.  FFC started a home in Bangladesh and that led to some dilemmas for us.  We had 300 kids – but the landlord had set a limit of 200.  A young mother came to the door of the home and asked if she could leave her child with FFC.  Our worker said no as the house was full.  The mother put her hands around the baby’s throat and started to strangle the child.  Please don’t judge this woman who was doing the best she knew to do.  Just note that it provided an ethical dilemma for our worker.

FFC brought many hundreds of children to Canada for adoption.  Each child is a miracle.  Yet times have changed, it’s increasingly difficult to adopt a child from anywhere.  What a dilemma – it’s understandable when communities are afraid that their culture will be absorbed and their children lost to them if they are adopted into a culture other than their own.  And yet, the lives of those children are at risk.  For some of those same reasons, the idea of surrogate mothering is an issue for me.

My wife and I have built up an impressive list of failures as we have worked through our dilemmas.  We spent two months trying to set up a home in Sri Lanka.  We failed.  We actually started a Home in Bhopal because we knew there were a lot of orphans there from the Union Carbide gas disaster.  We failed, because the population thought we were the same folks who created such an social catastrophe.

We had many roadblocks and many failures.  Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without losting enthusiasm.”  And yet we now have 8 Homes caring for 1,100 formerly destitute children and about 150 women.

I was lamenting to my old professor from theological school that what we were doing is such a drop in the bucket.  He wrote back, “Fred, don’t despair.  When Jesus helped the suffering, it was mostly individuals.  He worked retail – not wholesale.”  So that was somewhat comforting.

Sometimes our dilemmas are just mistakes – and the issue is how best to hand it.  We once got a very angry letter from a woman who said, “I sent you a donation.  I signed the cheque.  You sent the receipt back in my husband’s name.  How could you?”  Now there was a problem.  Luanna, our office manager, said “Well, Fred, you can deal with that one.”  Here’s what I wrote her:

Dear Donor:

Your angry note really shook us up here at the Child Haven office.  Of course, you are absolutely right.  Even though Revenue Canada allows wife and husband to interchange tax receipts, it is an important principle.  So we have voided the receipt we sent you, and are enclosing another.

I have been a strong feminist since childhood, and my heart was warmed by your letter.  Child Haven is very much woman-oriented, my wife is President, and runs the show.  She is very good at dealing with macho types in our program overseas, and two of our homes have women managers.  I am getting mail from India addressed to Mr. Bonnie Cappuccino.  

Wishing you all the best!

The complainant was mollified and later on I was quite pleased to receive from her a lovely nine-page hand-written letter.

Another example of a dilemma, though, it how to ensure our volunteers learn humility.  For example, one of our volunteers came back quite proud that he had taught the “ignorant folks” how to take a bath.  People sometimes equate a lack of opportunity with a lack of intelligence.  So we now call the overseas volunteers Interns and they go not to teach but to learn.

This kind of equation is also true with banking, micro-credit is now doing great things.  Yunus from the Grameen Bank found that very small amounts of money could improve the lot of, for example, a woman offering shoe-shining who had to rent her shoe-shine box from the fellow who owned it.  A small micro-credit loan enabled her to buy her box – although as a man, Yunus had to make the arrangements for the loan by sitting outside and talking to the women who were inside their houses.  His micro-credit operatio has a pay-back of over 98% on these small loans.  The banks are paid back from loans they make to the very rich at a rate of about 10%.  What a success story.

Traditional bankers wouldn’t make that cultural accommodation, and they also couldn’t get their heads around how illiterate woman could fill out an application – they couldn’t sign their names, they weren’t used to paying loans back – how could they be trusted?  I suspect that the very poor are at least as intelligent as the corporate CEO who knows nothing except the bottom line.

Another dilemma for us has been whether to accept money raised in ways that promote addiction.  For example, money from gambling, bingo or raffles – that’s always a tough one.  One friend in India called us a few months ago and said a mysterious acquaintance of his wanted to make a donation to Child Haven of $78 million (not even rupees).  The donor would want half of it back and donate the rest – and Bonnie savoured the thought for about 12 seconds about what Child Haven could do with $39 million….before telling our friend that it was impossible for us to be a vehicle for laundering money.

Another dilemma for us has been when children from our Homes ask us to take charge of arranging their marriages.  We do our best to make good matches – and our boys will make good husbands (although I suspect there is a well-founded concern from some in the community with youth of marriageable age that our young women will not be terribly subservient).  We have trouble making matches within our homes though.  Bonnie asked one marriageable boy at our Hyderabad Home if he would consider one of the girls in the same Home.  He said, “Oh no! Bonniema, I can’t marry my cousin-sister!”

Dilemmas.

We are sometimes challenged to follow Ghandhian ideals in India – without being political.

We used to think that rain was pure.

In our modern world, it seems that everything is temporary,
nothing lasts forever, that old absolutes are now no more.

Some people think of their brand of religion as absolute.  

Or think they will never be troubled by dilemmas.  

But I can say along with Kahlil Gibran that there is only one thing that is absolute…

The infinite potential of a child – of every child.