It’s that time of year again, when boxes for canned foods, blankets and warm clothes are scattered throughout buildings on campus. It’s the time of year when some organizations, like Smiles for Christmas, ask for toy donations for less fortunate children. Soon, Salvation Army volunteers will ring their bells outside grocery stores. The Thanksgiving and Christmas season is probably when we think most about those in need.

It’s a noble desire to want to help the poor. It feels good to drop some change into a container — whether it is on a counter at a Circle K or outside of a Safeway. Charity is, for most of us, a quick dropping of a bag of cans or a handful of change that gives us a warm fuzzy feeling of knowing we’ve helped someone.

The recent collapse of India’s microfinance industry is a sobering look at charity — just in time to question our warm and fuzzy feelings. For-profit companies started loaning small amounts of money — such as $200 — to the poor, who used the money to start businesses, fix up homes, etc. Now, the loans are backfiring because people can’t pay them back; that means the for-profit companies are losing the money they sought to gain from the loans. Banks that backed the loans are suffering, affecting the Indian economy for the worse because of the losses. Those who received loans were oftentimes unqualified to pay them back and/or were never educated about loans in the first place.

The loan defaults have had huge financial ramifications for the country, because the for-profit companies’ mix of misguided good intentions and greed preyed on people who couldn’t afford the loans in the first place but needed financial help. What is happening in India is similar to what happened in the U.S. with subprime lending. Giving a person a fish —in this case, handing him or her a loan — will not help in the long run. The only way to help people is to teach them how to fish. The people in India who received loans should have been given more information when making that financial decision, instead of being handed money in hopes the interest payments would make profits for those who were in charge of the loans. It seems the people in charge of lending forgot the loans were meant to help people overcome poverty, not become slaves to debt — if the lenders were even looking to alleviate poverty, to begin with. The financial meltdown in India also goes to show greed — selfish interest — has no place in charity, an action synonymous with selflessness.

Charity is more than the emotional acts of benevolence we typically think about. Helping somebody can be serious work — relieving suffering or fulfilling needs usually isn’t automatic. The Indian for-profit companies’ greed aside, we can see from the Indian microfinance industry’s collapse charity is more of a process than an action. Most of us help the process of charity by providing money or goods so large organizations can give them to others, but we must recognize giving somebody money or food, or giving a child a toy, is not the end of it.