The Pittsburgh Steelers Win the Super Bowl

The Pittsburgh Steelers win the Super Bowl. At least that is what a lot of people are going to think in developing countries. Why? Haven’t you wondered where all those shirts and caps go that were printed for the Super Bowl, but they were printed with the losing team on them. Certainly, you have noticed that the winners are wearing merchandise immediately. And if you were actually there, shirts for the Packers were being sold as soon as the game ended. And if there were shirts for the Packers, there were also just as many somewhere for the Steelers.

So where do all the shirts for the losers go? Well, the companies that print them give them as a gift in kind to a relief agency that gives them to poor people in another part of the world. These people who receive the merchandise probably don’t know anything about American football or even know who the Pittsburgh Steelers are.

But this whole “Super” gift has become controversial this week among relief work. The merchandise companies get to make a charitable donation because of the gift which makes it easier to justify printing shirts for the losers and more profitable. And the relief agency gets its bottom line looking better by sending more relief. But do the recipients need another 100,000 t-shirts? Aren’t American t-shirts already in abundance in nearly every developing country? And if they are not needed, what about the immense cost of shipping them? And most textile industries in developing countries can no longer make it because they can’t compete with the donations of new and used clothing from America that is actually better than they can produce. And these products are sold very cheaply or given away. So how can they ever make an economic turnaround with such unfair competition?

I’m not questioning the motives of any of the players in this controversy. The ones giving the shirts just don’t want to throw good shirts away when someone poor could use them. The ones distributing shirts are just doing what they do so well—giving to the poor.

Perhaps the whole deal is making a mountain of a molehill in the big scheme of poverty. But it is a reminder in the light of professional football for all of us doing relief to remember to be “professional” ourselves. It is also a call for all of us to analyze what we are doing to make sure we are really helping. We can be generous without necessarily helping. At times we should make sure that we are not only being good givers but also being smart givers.

Helpers should always help. Certainly, this isn’t a super issue. Maybe it is not a big deal if one is wearing a shirt with wrong information about a football team. But it can become a big deal if we don’t get smart. Much of the blame of the cholera epidemic in Haiti is now being blamed on the United Nations. Their workers from Bangladesh are being accused of improperly dealing with waste that may have caused the cholera breakout. There is no question that these workers came to help. But by not being smart about their help, it appears that they actually hurt much more than they helped.

Generous hearts don’t preclude smart minds. We always can make some mistakes. And we want to be more compassionate than analytical in our aid. But maybe no matter where we are coming from (bringing global relief as an organization or giving to the guy on the street), we can think through the best way to help. And wouldn’t it be good to make the poor part of the “winning team” once in a while?

About Milt

Milton Jones is the President of Christian Relief Fund in Amarillo, Texas. In his work there, he has focused on the care of AIDS orphans in Sub-Sahara Africa. He has also served as a preacher and campus minister in both Texas and Washington. Milton has authored eight books including a touching tale of one of his heroes with Cerebral Palsy, Sundays With Scottie. He is married to Barbie Jones and has two sons, Patrick and Jeremy.
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One Response to The Pittsburgh Steelers Win the Super Bowl

  1. Rob Meyer says:

    What a conundrum! Reminds me of a story I’d heard years ago of a group which had gone to Africa to help villages obtain clean water. They had a wonderful system, but it all depended on one particular item, a rather sophisticated filter or something, that wasn’t quite as dependable as advertised. When it broke down after a few months, they discovered that the replacement part (with shipping) cost more than the entire village’s income for the year. In the end, the were worse off than before, because they had a completely useless water filtration system which they had to dismantle in order to get any water at all.

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