What to do When People Ask for Money in the Street?

A number of people have asked us this question recently. We ask ourselves this question regularly. Our friend Paul Neufeld Weaver posted the following ideas.

"In reponse to your question, when I lived in Mexico and Central America I would sometimes carry fruit or some other food with me to give to people who ask for money. One advantage of this is that the person is likely in need of food and can actually eat the food. Sometimes, especially in big cities, when people beg, there is another person who takes a share of or all of what they receive. I have also, when I have had time (not often enough) invited people to somewhere I can buy them a plate of food. When people would come to our home we would sometimes do this. But in those cases you need to realize that you will likely get many people coming to your door. I have a friend in Chicago who always keeps loose dollar bills in his pocket and gives one dollar to anyone who asks, following Jesus' dictum pretty literally. An interesting response was described in an article some years ago in Friends Journal. The author described his dilemma of repsonding to those who ask for money and his solution of asking the person to grant him an interview for which he pays (I think $5) and he has a set of 4-5 questions he asks, which help him to establish a human connection and to understand something of the life situation of the other. One time in Honduras I stood and watched a blind beggar on a busy street for 30 minutes. The boy received approximately 3-4 lempiras, $2 at that time's exchange rate which was close to what some people earned per day in Honduras in 1979 (and perhaps today, too)."