Am I wrong? And I do care for Africa!

So the other day me and my friend Alex were discussing the economy and how everything has just kinda have gone to crap!! So i had made the mistake of speaking my mind in front of him (not that i have anything against Africa or any other poverty-stricken countries) and brought up how I think that we as a state need to stick together and make things better here before we help anywhere else. I may sound very selfish but just hear me out, I believe that if everyone here in Vegas picked up a piece of trash for every piece of trash we threw away, gave a dollar out to a bum (but be careful there's so many who knows if some are legit anymore!!) for every 20 we spent Vegas would slowly start improving. No doubt it will take time. I am not asking for it to happen over night. But just like how the Puritans way back when wanted to achieve a perfect society, it all started with us as individuals. We can not ask an entire country to change and adjust all at once. But anyway my point about the Puritans. If we want change and we want to try and pursue a Utopian society then we have to start small and work our way up. So after I told Alex "You know we should chill on helping Africa for a while to we get some of our mess cleaned up". OMG. You would have thought I bagged on his mother!! He went off on me and told me i dont care about the little kids with their ribs showing on the commericals and i hate Africa. Which is not true because i always am sending my cans to the food drives or whatever they ask for. But do i have somewhat of a point? I mean I kind of rambled on in this post but i mean if we overall want to be a better nation we have to work on bettering oursleves first. Right?