"Jimmy is 15 years old, he has cancer and needs to go to the UK for further treatment... Magdalene, 21, had a serious accident some years back and, following rehabilitation, requires ongoing specialised support by an NGO...

"Diane and Paul have a new-born baby who has a serious medical condition and needs a great deal of medical and therapeutic support...

"Sharon and her two sons need financial and moral support after losing her partner in a construction site accident...."

The following are some annotations I would like to share in the aftermath of all the condescending acts of big-heartedness and open-handedness we have experienced these last days:

1. The quality of life of a population is an important concern. A significant part of our standard of living is measured by social capital, human well-being and civic community. People keep asking themselves whether we can still talk about community or have we all turned into an island - individualised, egocentric and self-centred, whereby nothing matters anymore to us than "me".

2. I do not go with the collective panic surrounding the notion that "community" is no longer important to us but I do acknowledge massive transformations we are experiencing and fundamental difficulties in interpreting "community" and its constitution - even because "community" can no longer be localised in the space we were used to but is sculpturing itself in many forms and shapes. We do need to ask some very important and fundamental questions here: What is community? What happens when people find themselves left out of communities? Who is missing and why does it matter? What can one do to narrow this gap?

3. Essentially, "community" is about people living together. What annoys me, however, is that we do not realise well-enough that we need to work hard towards inclusive communities not simply by giving a euro or 20 of them. We need to link this debate with the discourse of change and transformation. It may make us proud that our share of "cap in hand" is colossal here in Malta. We get our campaigns going, which strangely enough find NGOs and their members gaping at the generosity as they are being used and abused by the "do-gooders", longing to be on the chosen list of beneficiaries. Locals are happy to experience this as part of the social justice and solidarity exercise we are so accustomed to in "big-hearted" Malta.

4. It may well be that charity in spite of everything can become the architect of violence, a humanitarian mask hiding the face of exploitation characterising our communities. Is it possible that we are obsessed with charity borne out of a need to have our own superstition-based "insurance policy" - if I give a dime, "it won't happen to me"! Charity may not be a show of solidarity in all truth but a token that will help me go through it all without major snags. We need to ask ourselves whether charity in spite of everything is an ingredient of the organised system of capitalism to neutralise and detract our critical thinking on the way social relations are wasting out.

In my opinion, donations and offerings can become a ruthless and callous charity pragmatism to obscure our vision on the social divisions that are still so strong and pronounced in our communities. In other words, we should be doing something "together" instead of doing something "about it". The idea being thrown at us is that the horrors in the world can be bought with a small amount of money. And, to add insult to injury, the notion that we can buy ourselves out of that responsibility makes us feel virtuous. The assumption is that "change and hope" comes about if we dig in our pockets (and bring out the extra cents and [almost] expired can food). Let's ask another two fundamental questions: To "change" what? To "hope" for what?

5: In itself the notion of "love of other" ("respect", "comprehension" - call it what you may) can in itself be a brutal statement because love is selective, it chooses on grounds "we" opt to parley - namely that of egoism, self-interest and self-gratification. Do we share universal moral principles and moral standards in our communities? What will give our morality any sense of transcendence?

6. Maybe this may not have the likings of an indifferent state but it isn't a welfare community to me either. Society is about people able to live together and not living at arms length of each other. The more time passes the less I feel "us" and the more I feel "me".

"Community" depends on good governance, broad debate and decision-making, management of community resources, adequate use of public space blended within a discourse of human and civil rights. This will reduce drastically our need to have people expose their stories as if we have a God-given right to know them simply because we have deposited a couple of euros in our "conscious account".

Let us all in 2009 locate the strengths and weaknesses of this phenomenon called "community". Let us recognise the value of resiliency as opposed to weakness and pathology. Let us respect the importance of cultural relativity and diversity. Let us all create the difference which collectively will bring about the much sought after social change.

Trust between individuals thus becomes trust between strangers and trust of a broad fabric of social institutions. Ultimately, it becomes a shared set of values, virtues, and expectations within society as a whole. Without this interaction, on the other hand, trust decays. At a certain point, this decay begins to manifest itself in serious social problems... The concept of social capital contends that building or rebuilding community and trust requires face-to-face encounters (Beem 1999: 20).

Dr Azzopardi is lecturer at the Department of Youth & Community Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Malta.