by Nadia Ramoutar MMM Communications Coordinator              Ireland         13.09.2025

What would you do if you were on a walk and you saw a small child drowning in a shallow pond?

This hypothetical question was asked in a powerful book I recently read called “The Life you can Save” by Peter Singer. Singer adds some more details to his thought experiment.

Imagine you are on the way to work when you see the child and you will be late. “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?”

For most of us this is not a hard question. We would if able bodied, wade in and get the child or at least call for emergency services. Very few of us would say that we could just turn our head and walk by. Yet – and that is a very big YET, we know for a fact that people do turn away and let children die or suffer daily. Some of those people are relatives of the child.
Singer does give examples of video footage that shows how when a small infant was hurt next to road, 54 people passed by and looked the other way.

It’s a bit hard to swallow this.

Singer’s question has successfully converted many people to become more active in their volunteer and philanthropy efforts. In reading his book, I am recommitted to my efforts for children and women globally. I think the challenge though is how do we reach the 54 people who walked by and let that toddler hurt on the side of the road die in broad daylight.

How do we stop preaching to the choir? How do we get those who are not engaged to be active in caring?

Perhaps the tragedy of screens is that we are becoming more and not less desensitized to seeing children suffer. We have gotten to point where we might fix our social media so we don’t see bad news. We don’t like to read the newspaper or watch the TV news because it’s too depressing.

As more suffering emerges globally, this discomfort we want to avoid grows. But, while it is sincere to protect our mental health, can we ethically turn our heads because the children dying or suffering are not right physically next to us?
Is there a proximity to caring?

I hope not. I know that the MMMs continue to live and work in difficult, if not impossible circumstances because we cannot look away.
Thank you to those who continue to not only look but make actual strides to pray or care in some way.
Any effort or gift, no matter how small prevents us from being one of the 54 who let the infant die unaided.