Consider the following comments on charity.
The first time I gave and wanted to be thanked, I understood how tangled charity can be.
It is easier to give money to a cause than attention to a person in front of you.
No one has ever become poor by giving.
Anne Frank
Charity can quietly comfort the giver more than it relieves the one in need.
Sometimes the kindest gift is the one that makes you unnecessary.
Write a reflective piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your thinking and the way you express it.
A way into this prompt
A reflective thesis is that giving is rarely as simple as it looks, since my own acts of charity have been laced with motives I would rather not see, and the goodness lay in noticing them rather than denying them. Open with a concrete moment, a donation made and quietly remembered, a hand extended where I caught myself wanting to be seen extending it. Then move inward to the tension: charity can be love made practical, yet it can also flatter the giver, soothe a guilt, or keep the receiver dependent and grateful. A useful structural move contrasts giving that truly served the other person with giving that mainly served my image of myself. Caution: resist both the cynicism that dismisses all charity as self interest and the self congratulation that mistakes generosity for virtue, since the truer question is what my giving actually did for the person who received it.