Three cases

1.
A friend of mine is in Afghanistan at the moment, not to fight but to cure: he is a surgeon in a military compound. There they treat under dangerous circumstances the many severely wounded with modern equipment. He regularly sends e-mails with pictures to his Dutch friends in which he, like in a diary, describes what he and his colleagues are experiencing from day to day. His e-mails let themselves read almost as a novel. You know that there are doctors over there, you know there's fighting, etc., but when you read the daily reports about the accidents, the injuries, the amputations, the failed operations (luckily they are few because the very dangerously injured die during transportation, if you survive this, you have a reasonable chance to make it), the way the doctors pass their scarce leisure time, etc. you really become aware how foolish war is in fact. Although the field-hospital is primarily intended for military, most helped are Afghanistans, and even the civilian hospital in Kabul sends patients to them because of their medical skills and advanced equipment.

When in the Netherlands somebody is shot in the street, all newspapers and TV report exensively about it. This week there were two casualties: one schizophrenic patient escaped from his guidance during an outing in the city, ran to the police station and stabbed the officer at the counter, after which he tried to stab her colleague, who shot him before he could do so; on his way to the hospital he died. The stabbed officer survived after medical treatment. The night after this happened, there were protest demonstrations against the police who allegedly "murdered" the man who entered the policestation. Two days after this event, a 14 year old high school pupil killed his classmate with a knife because he didn't like him. These casualties cause waves of upsetness and sorry in the whole country - in Afghanistan things like these occur hundreds of times more often - . And in Iraq it's still worse.

My friend the surgeon explained before he left that he went there voluntarily, the Netherlands were bound to provide a certain amount of medical support, and contributions to this support were given by regular hospitals throughout the country by means of a system built on free will and equal distribution of burden.

2.
Nearer to home, I saw on TV teams of volunteers recruited via a special Internetsite, who help people without money in deep trouble. Since about ten years, our government subsideses so-called "care far"ms": those are farms provided with the needed housing facilities, to house people like homeless and difficult life circumstances, not able to lead a normal civic life. In exchange for farm work - to the extent of their abilities - these people get housing and professional guidance leading them to a life with a job and income, if needed, with extra education. The farms are far from the cities and they have proven to be effective in most cases. Next to the professionals, also volonteers work on those farms. On TV one vould see how a teenage mother was in deep trouble because she was pregnant of her second baby and the welfare authorities would take the baby away from her because she had no house. Her family was poor and she stayed for the time being in a small bedroom with one of her familymembers. She put a help call on the Internetsite, and got an invitation from a "care farm": she was so happy, and could keep the bay, while her young husband (also a late teener) would get coaching for a school where he would learn a job.

3.
Another help team from the Internetsite was shown while cleaning up the mess in a house, and restoring it (it leaked, there was draught everywhere, the electricity cables were not in order etc.) because there, too, a kid would be taken away because of the miserable living circumstances. The boy (I estimate around 10) would "never" leave his parents he said, and his mother would flee the country if they would come and collect her son. The mother was 46 years old and the father 72. The help team was welcomed whole-heartedly, they cleaned up and repaired, and the family could stay together.

You see, these are the people who put everything in practice. They deserve a medal and a guest seat in Oprah's show.