by StephaneLaliberte 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
The upgrading and folding of at least on kh in that country was done with Japanese know-how and funding.
funds given to the WT INC for those purposes.
If this would be open, transparent as the real estate venture that it has turned out to be,
the contributors of money and work should be issued shares.
A good number of the attendees can barely feed themselves. they will be totally endebted for this good building
Most of those that can pay, --, do rely on support from overseas relatives.
New Worldly... I believe its time for me to say: Your right, I'm wrong! According to World Vision, 21% of the population actually lives without proper sanitation and most of them are in the rural area. So comparing the 10% poverty line to that of the USA was wrong.
So now, we are left to wonder exactly what is the ratio for the JW as the message is likely more appealing to the poor. 30%? 40%? What about the other 60% who do have the monney? Do they have enough monney to help the poor in their own countries?
Also, not having access to proper sanitation... does that systematicaly translates to not having acccess to cheep building materials for cheep KHs?
I believe the heart of the issue here is that the JW Org is silent on the actual amounts sent and provides no financial reports of any kind.
One way or another, it is clear that the 1000 Kingdom Halls were not entirely funded by the International JW Community.
Using the logic in the original post concerning the 1000 halls:
If we draw the poverty line at 40%, this would mean that the international community actually funded 266 Kingdom Halls over the last 12 years, or an average of 22 per year. Lets be concervative and say a KH costs 100,000$ to build and we have 2.2 millions per year (26.4 millions in the last 12 years).
Interesting...
Have you been to the Philippines? I have been there and visit often. My wife is from the island of Cebu and I've stayed in Manilla, Cebu, and Bohol. Comparing the poverty of the Philippines to the USA is not a fair comparison. Our poor are fat, have cell phones, cars ect..... My first visit to the country, I had a man with one arm amputated with his eye sunken into his skull begging for food. He had two small children next to him also starved. While staying in my sister-in-law's house in Cebu, there were little children who would dig in the burn pile for items to recycle. I saw countless shacks on the side of streets with entire families living in them. On the sidewalk again were these tent cities. Never in my entire life have I once witness such poverty in the USA. My wife lost three brother's to diseases when they were in their early thirties. They don't know the cause of death because lack of money for medical. I saw a man who laid in the street for hours with half his head missing from a car accident. No ambulance and no police for hours because he was a no body. Yes, I've seen tent cities here in the states and yes I've seen families living in vans and cars when the economy crashed but still doesn't compare to a country that has virtually no safety nets for its citizens.
With that being said I do agree with your overall point. The Jehovah Witnesses could do so much for these people but do very little. They want to beat on their chest when they construct a few homes that were destroyed in a storm but for those that are not members nothing.
Im English and livein the Philippinesthe poverty isroughly about 70 % of the population andi mena rela poverty there is no free health care, no free education , well very little, no benefits, if you dont have money you die, unless you have family
As I do not live in the philippines, do not have family over there, and have never visited, it would be arrogant on my part to simply dismiss your comments (adjusted knowledge and givemejustalittlemoretime).
Yet, my assesment was not drawn out of thin air. The reports I have seen with the UN, world vision and even real estate web sites clearly indicates that a large portion of the population is actualy wealthy, many living in the cities.
Yes, these cities obviously have slums and their fair share of poor, however, according to world vision, 80% of the poor population are found in the rural areas. This means that geographically speaking, someone can live in the phillipines and be surrounded by extream poverty while others can live in richer cities. Knowing that 63% of the population live in the cities, my asssesment of - "40% too poor to contribute anything" - still sounds reasonable.
Of course, if you have further input on the matter, it will be my pleasure to revise like I did for New Worldly above.
That being said, all my thoughts and heart are with those whos situation is so dificult that they can't have access to decent medecine or sanitary services. The only objective of this post is to actually put a number on the contributions made by the Watchtower to the Kingdom hall development in the Philippines. Since the watchtower is not providing any specific numbers, what I provide here is an educated guess.
