If you haven’t heard about it yet, The Good Note is a new initiative by Bou Khalil Supermarket aiming to give the children on the streets the essentials they need without funding the adults who sent them out to the streets and might be abusing them.
The idea is to sell small vouchers worth 1,000L.L each that can only be redeemed at Bou Khalil for necessities and small treats or at Pharmalife pharmacy in Hazmieh. You’re of course supposed to keep these vouchers in your wallet to give them to the child you may encounter on the street so that they can buy the stuff they really need, and this way you make sure you’re actually giving them responsibly.
The initiative is definitely good and plausible, I personally usually avoid giving child beggars any money because I know it will end up in the wrong hands, and always prefer to give them any food I might have instead. However, after giving a second thought about The Good Note it sounded a bit unpractical for the following reasons.
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Explaining the idea to children
I know we get stuck in traffic for a good time in Beirut, but sometimes you have so little time to give children the voucher and explain to them it isn’t fake and that they can really redeem it at a certain supermarket. Judging by how these children behave, I doubt they will believe it and will most probably end up throwing away the vouchers.
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Branch locations
Assuming a child was convinced to go redeem a voucher, Bou Khalil has only one branch in Beirut (Koraytem) and going all the way from Achrafieh, Bechara El Khoury, or Mazraa for example doesn’t really seem cost effective to me in order to redeem a vouhcer, two or three.
Other branches nearby Beirut are located in Hazmieh, Hadath, and Mansourieh.
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How much are you willing to give?
Seriously now, how much are willing to give a child beggar? I personally never gave them more than 1,000L.L. So these children will have to wait until they collect a good number of these vouchers before making a trip to the supermarket to buy the necessities they need.
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What happens to the change?
Say a child bought goods worth 2,250L.L, what happens to the remaining 750L.L? The website claims the voucher cannot be redeemed for real money.
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The generated profit
The website claims the generated profit from the sales of these good notes will go to an NGO that works to care for street and working children in Lebanon. It isn’t clear though whether the exact voucher value or the profit generated after completing a sales transaction will be donated to the NGO, but I think it is most probably the latter, which seems very little money to me…
It also wasn’t clear what would happen to the value of the vouchers that get thrown away and end up never used, which will result in pure profit for Bou Khalil alone.
I really don’t want Bou Khalil to hate on me because of this post, but it is our right to question such initiatives. In my opinion, Bou Khalil could have simply offered people to purchase any goods they want and deposit them in a box at the exit and street children will then be free to enter into the supermarket and pick the items they need the most (it can be limited to 2 items per day).
COOP Supermarkets also started a good initiative a while ago allowing customers to pay an extra 1,500L.L for a pack of bread to be available at the entrance for anyone who might be in need.
