Brad and Angelina Open Children’s Clinic in Ethiopia
If only all fame and fortune were channeled into the
common good….
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated $2 million to start a
center in Ethiopia
for children with AIDS and tuberculosis. About 900,000 children in Ethiopia have been orphaned because
of AIDS, and the country has the seventh highest rate of tuberculosis in the world.
Though curable, tuberculosis continues to ravage the population in large part
due to inadequate treatment.
The center will be named after Brad and Anelina
Rich famous vaccous celebrities making their children run charity’s how ridiculous is that.
What if Zahara turns out to be a party girl like Nicole Richie (Nicole was supposedly rescue adopted), Nicole during her heroin party days running a charity.
One of our readers posted this:
Maddox has one too.
Jolie and Pitt, in 2006, set up the Maddox Chivan Children’s Center in Phnom Penh. It receives funding from both the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, and Chopard Diamonds. At the time, the parents also said they expected Maddox to grow up and run the center, and bring positive changes to his country. Maddox was four at the time the charity was established. Zahara will be four in January, but by the looks of things, she is a very precocious child.
They have already indicated they expect to do the same thing with Pax.
Personally, I hope they find a way to use their biological children to establish children’s charities here in the US. We have foster children who need homes, and children going hungry and homeless under this fascist regime that has overtaken our country, with the goal of making the rich richer, and to hell with everybody else.
Leahsmom, I think you articulated your discomfort with this very well, and I was pretty much thinking the same thing.
What if she has no interest in living in Ethiopia? What if she has no interest in any of this plan her parents have set for her at age 3?
I do think that the gift, first of all, is a great thing to do. And I also agree that it’s a wonderful thing when the super-rich attempt to foster empathy and understanding in their children, to make them involved citizens.
I think, to put it more coherently, that the “mixed” part of my feelings comes because:
Before | After
So what is it about this that bothers me?
Sep. 15th, 2008 at 3:40 PM
This bothers me. I will say, I’m generally in favor of the charitable giving. It’s not the gift that bothers me, it’s the comment about their child.
I’ve been trying to think of exactly what it is that bothers me about the comment. I’m still not sure, but here are some thoughts:
- Zahara is an adopted child. Unlike some of her five brothers and sisters, she’s also a child of a different race than her parents (and some siblings). None of Zahara’s brothers and sisters have been tasked, at the age of 3, with carrying on their parents’ charitable activities towards the country of their birth. This statement seems to me to be distinguishing between their children on the basis of race and/or biological relationship – not something that I, as an adopted child with an adopted sibling of a different race, am at all comfortable with.
- It also smacks a bit of, Zahara must be responsible for this because her parents rescued her from her Ethiopian life. So, in gratitude for that, she owes it to them to make her birth country better. Again, it is a nuance that wouldn’t arise with their biological children. I don’t necessarily believe that children need to be grateful for being adopted any more than they do for being born – I think we all need to be grateful and cognizant of our opportunities and luck. But not more so because we are adopted.
I guess I mean – would they donate money to help the homeless in America, or victims of AIDS, or any other good cause, and hope their biological kids would take it on? Or does this only apply to the adopted, differently colored kids? Did they say the same for Maddox, with the Cambodian foundation? Or only for their black child?
It gives me pause as well, but I also think that people with the amazing fortunes that these two have have to make parent in ways different from the Rest of Us. Some billionaires cut their kids off and make them find their own way, encouraging a child to take up such a project for their homeland strikes me as a kinder way to encourage humanity and empathy in the super-rich.
I’m curious as to why it’s Zahara’s responsibility to take over the clinic, rather than any of the other five, seperately or together. Because she was born in Ethiopia? Something about that doesn’t sit right with me, but I can’t put my finger on what.