A million death is a statistic, one death is a tragedy

From the interview with Richard Stearns, President of World Vision (sourced from Guy Kawasaki's blog...he did the interview himself, I believe)

Question: What’s the biggest obstacle to get rich people to care about poor people?
Answer: The obstacle is that poverty is often not personal. If your next-door neighbor’s child was dying and you could save her for $100, you wouldn’t think twice. But a child 10,000 miles away whom you have never met, that’s just different.About 29,000 kids die every day of preventable causes–29,000! These kids have names and faces, hopes and dreams. Their parents love them as much as we love our kids. We’ve got to make poverty personal. Stalin once said: “A million deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy.” We must try to see the face of the one child.

That in a nutshell describes why World Vision has been successful at fund raising - the notion of child sponsorship where people are allowed to see the face of that one child. I found this interview in Ronnie Liu's blog.

I have to admit that before I have my own child I've never really understood the pain a parent has to endure when his or her own child suffers. Now that I understand, as most of us who are parents do, perhaps it's time we also do what little we can to alleviate the suffering endured by children of unfortunate parents.