Charity may begin at home, but how should you respond to need when you journey abroad? Here are some thoughts on grappling with one of travel's most difficult questions

Every traveler I know has faced the dilemma of whether or not to give when asked for money by the needy. The issue is especially difficult in developing countries, where the poverty is more striking than at home and the social services infrastructure less developed. Some of us carry around a pocketful of coins and hand one to each person who asks. Others refuse to give handouts because they feel it only perpetuates the problem of poverty and impedes any long-term solution. I've tried different approaches in different places, but I've returned to my hotel room more times than I can count wondering whether I gave when I shouldn't have or didn't when I should have. Sometimes even a simple act of kindness isn't simple at all: On a few occasions, I've handed a coin or a cookie to a lone, desperate-looking child and then been swarmed by 20 more children who appeared out of nowhere, trampling one another to grab the next coin or cookie. In spite of my intentions, I had caused a problem rather than done some good.

Many aid organizations say that it's always wrong to give panhandlers money, since it contributes to social problems such as child exploitation, prostitution, and thievery. Adults in developing countries sometimes force children to beg for money, keeping them home from school and occasionally even maiming them so that they inspire pity and generate more handouts. "I don't give to beggars as a matter of principle," says Maureen Lewis, a health and development economist and a senior fellow with the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C. "It leads to really poor behaviors"—such as badgering tourists in an effort to extract money from them. "There are a lot of scams going on, and it's difficult to know what's a scam and what isn't." Better, she says, to make a donation to a local charity that provides social services.

But Robert Coles, the James Agee Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard, who has received both a Pulitzer Prize and a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on children and poverty, says that there is a moral danger in deciding never to give handouts to individuals. "Yes, there can be hustling and manipulation and efforts to deceive among the needy, but doesn't that go on even among plenty of us who are doing very well? In shrugging off another human being, our humanity is at stake." A policy of never giving to individuals punishes the needy who are innocent of scams, he points out. Furthermore, Coles says, the human exchange that can occur between a traveler and a person in need can benefit both. Having experienced those exchanges myself—such as when someone to whom I've given a few coins shows me his home as a thank-you—I would have to agree.