Why it’s useless, because:
1. Usually you are donating to poor community far away from your home. You should instead donate to your close neighbour who live in poverty and let them know that their neighbour chinese family is very kind to them.So when riots recur they hopefully remember your kindness and won’t burn, kill or rape you.
2. They will still be poor and uneducated despite of your kind donation. The reason they will always be poor and uneducated because the government is always corrupt. As you know uneducated people go violent easily. Therefore you should put your effort on eliminating corruption and push the government to promote education and create more jobs for the people. All have to go hand in hand, otherwise you will not be able to break the cycle of poverty and hence violence against minority.
3. Don’t be afraid to be involved in politics. Understand that, most indonesian want corruption eliminated totally from the government but they do not have enough political literacy to know how to do so. For example, they did not use their voting power during the last general election to change the corrupt government into a good one. Promoting political literacy to your fellow chinese and native Indonesian may be a good option to start with.

Being financially better is a strong point in your effort to encourage all the changes I mentioned above. Use that well for your favor. And remember being financially better is not a sin. You earned it and most of the chinese descendents honestly earned it by working very hard and managing their earnings well for more than 1 or 2 generations.

My apology for such a lengthy comment. I am not trying to patronize you, especially in the good effort you have done. I just don’t want your effort to go in vain. What you have done, has been done by many chinese in Indonesia decades or centuries ago. In spite of all those kindness, the cycle of poverty and violence never breaks. And now again you are doing the exact same thing like our predecessor. You might not know this because the government has covered up this so tightly that only few people know about our true history.

I don’t mean to discourage you, but since you have to deal with it anyway, this not a task you would expect to see results in 1 or 2 years. Expect 1 or 2 even 3 to 5 decades. But if you start right now by doing the right thing, may be things will change in the future and racial harmony is not a dream anymore.

@Irwan, for everything you and your organizations have done, I can’t thank you enough. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

indonesian chinese IS minority (very small at that) less than 10% of population who are financially MUCH better off than the majority

there is no guarantee that it will happen again either

————————————————–

I am a member of one of the many chinese organisations in Indo. We’ve done several things here to promote racial harmony. Such as doing voluntary social work and donating to the poor. We did this under the banner of our organisation.

It’s one thing to expect racial harmony, it is another thing to do something tangible about it.

Considering the above, I would prefer to see your articles in lower class newspapers rather than the Jakarta Post.

You know what, I found myself having the same idea like you, too. Some day I want to go back home to Indonesia and contribute to the people, too.

Not all Chinese Indonesians wish to move to other countries and I myself and others might eventually return to Indonesia to contribute there. Meanwhile, I’m working for betterment of mankind from USA. Time will come when I have to work from Indonesia directly.

You said it correctly, let the people decide where they wanna live. But we all must acknowledge our ancestors so we have a better sense of who we are and where we are going in the future.

Keep positive!

I hope you and your peers will make a difference, will eradicate idiocy amongst ignorant Indonesians and will be able to break the barriers of differences in race, culture and religion that is alarmingly strengthening in Indonesia.

I, for one, have lost faith.