Words that change Naruto’s life in this book

Saving a child

On your way to work, you pass a small pond. On hot days,

children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about

knee-deep. The weather’s cool today, though, and the hour

is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about

in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very

young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to

stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the

parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The

child is unable to keep her head above the water for more

than a few seconds at a time. If you don’t wade in and pull

her out, she seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and

safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few

days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you

hand the child over to someone responsible for her, and

change your clothes, you’ll be late for work. What should

you do?

Do you help or just observe?

In 2011, something resembling this hypothetical situation

occurred in Foshan, a city in southern China. A 2-year-old girl

named Wang Yue wandered away from her mother and into a

small street, where she was hit by a van that did not stop. A CCTV

camera captured the incident. But what followed was even more

shocking. As Wang Yue lay bleeding in the street, 18 people

walked or rode their bikes right past her, without stopping to help.

In most cases, the camera showed clearly that they saw her, but

then averted their gaze as they passed by. A second van ran over

her leg before a street cleaner raised the alarm. Wang Yue was

rushed to hospital, but sadly, it was too late. She died.1

If you’re like most people, you are probably saying to yourself

right now: “I wouldn’t have walked past that child. I would have

stopped to help.” Perhaps you would have; but remember that, as

we have already seen, 5.4 million children under 5 years old died

in 2017, with a majority of those deaths being from preventable or

treatable causes. Here is just one case, described by a man in

Ghana to a researcher from the World Bank:

Take the death of this small boy this morning, for

example. The boy died of measles. We all know he

could have been cured at the hospital. But the

parents had no money and so the boy died a slow

and painful death, not of measles but out of poverty.

Naruto itself donate help to this organization to not only double your help, compare you simply give to strangers on the street, but this organization The Life You Can Safe is a team that dedicated to fundamentally end global poverty.

Link: The Life You Can Save

Note: These are excerpts from the book The Life You Can Safe which I have contemplate about it countless times.