Begging is a problem that appears in urban zones. It seems that in some countries the phenomena is reduced, compared to other countries where is a way of life.

How we can reduce it?

slug: article26 date: 2012-08-23 05:43:56 title: author: clauditzaclauditza@gmail.com tags: type: answer toslug: article23 —

I think a start would be to stop giving money or other goods.

slug: article39 date: 2013-11-07 08:20:44 title: author: SorinPostelnicusorin_postelnicu@yahoo.com tags: type: answer toslug: article23 —

People should be educated (via the media) about the problem of begging and about the fact that beggars usually raise more money than the average monthly salary in that city, and the largest percentage of that money goes to mafia-bosses. (A good example would be that televisions should periodically air the very informative film "Filantropica".)

So if people really care about helping the beggars (assuming that there are indeed some people that are poor and don't have sufficient means of existence) then, instead of just giving them small money, they should always try to talk to the beggars and see if they are indeed poor or they are just pretending, and direct them to some organized form of help (such as foundations/NGOs or public administration programmes to help poor people out-of-poverty). Plus, of course, to donate money (and preferably time) to such organisations...

(Side-note here: we can also create a new question about this: "How to reduce or eliminate poverty", because I've noticed that most organizations which have as goal to "help the poor", they are usually just providing them free meals and sometimes free shelter, but they usually don't take any actions to give people jobs or education..)

Another important note: Take care because the beggars usually have much more advanced persuasive skills compared to the normal people who are trying to help them! So usually when trying to talk to a begger you will only increase your chances that you will give them more money, because they have experience and skills in persuading people to give them money.