Reading what Robin and especially what Rheno have to say, makes me think of that modern proverb, above.
For Rheno, I guess if you want to make a difference, could you at home? Could you be a school teacher for native American kids? I worked with one guy that was also 25% Cherokee, 25% French, and 50% African descent. He was never really interested in teaching in the SW US. He had a lot to offer, too.
As far as capitalism goes, its not the money thats the problem, its the abuse of it, and the social factors and behaviors--greed, lust, etc.--that go with it.
Without money being properly spent, not much changes in places that have what we consider to be sub-standard living conditions. It takes money to hire the teacher to teach the students to be functional in the business world, to gain the capital needed to elevate the standard of living of their homes. Good examples of that are China of the last two generations, North Korea now, RO Mongolia recently, the Phillipines, Nasser's Nationalist Egypt, most of Africa.
Civic, state and the fed govs just seem to be behemouths, and nothing can stop them in their paths. But a lot of us go work for them anyway, just to try to do whatever we can from within. Teachers, social workers, nurses, etc., work for the man because we think we can brings changes--or something good--and not to the system, but to the people we work for. Like Robin said, if have have an attitude that we work for the student, client, patient, recipient of our services, and not for the administration, we feel alot better about it.
Sweat shops are a tough thing, philsophically, to handle. On the one hand, its a messed up way to treat humans. On the other hand, its an option. For so many of these kids, its not prostitution. And it is money for the family. Of course, a lot of that money is squandered by their loser dads on booze and prostitution! But thats a thread in another forum.
What most of us dont realise, or fail to remember at most critical times, is that we're all embassadors and representatives of our countries and of other ways of doing things, whether we want to be or not. The people around us--students, neighbors, friends, people at the bus stop, where ever--get so much more from us as examples than what we offer in the classroom. We need to be careful what we give them and what we leave behind when we leave.