I often put off contributing to charities, on the grounds that my income will jump in a couple years, after I graduate. It's easy to consider myself poor, in comparison to my peers who have real jobs now. The same $250 that would be a moderate expense now would be relatively trivial in five years. Even then, it's sobering to think that this sum, which I can afford to buy myself a plane ride home, a new windshield for my car, a new video game console, or a new dining table, this sum is also apparently what a distant cousin of mine might make in a year.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nickjong's journalCreate a LiveJournal Account Learn more
Comments
While in an airport in India I met a woman who worked for a development NGO in Orissa (a not so wealthy state on the west coast). We got into a long discussion about relative poverty. I made very little at that time (16K?) but it was a fortune compared to the income of the average person she worked with. However, she was a bit floored when I told her how much things like rent, food, healthcare, and heat cost here and how quickly that money drained away. My impoverished lifestyle still beat the pants off the impoverished lifestyle there and it had a couple of advantages over the Indian middle class and wealthy standard of living (rather be a wealthy Indian than a poor American though). The founder of the microcredit movement has an interesting story about realizing how little money and assistance people needed (look on the extras on the left hand side). It all makes me feel like I should donate more to organizations like Heifer International or to those like kiva.com. Then I remind myself that I am barely meeting my bills and have no money. Round in circles I go.
Have to say I don’t get why people are mad at Heifer International for placing the money in their general fund. The fine print is on each donation animal page, is a small but still normal size, is in a black font (gray on white is the most dishonest color) and is directly under the “Add To Cart” button so I can’t really see the deception. HI actually does buy/raise livestock which they give to actual people and HI teaches them how to care for their new livestock in a sustainable way. They do this thousands of times a year all over the world out of their general fund so I don’t understand your “merely.” Ensuring a one-to-one relationship between giver’s selection and the received animal would increase the administrative cost, would be an accountability nightmare, and the sole purpose would be to make the giver feel like he took “direct action.” Maybe that feeling would result in more donations; NPR found that they received more donations if they gave away silly gifts so there was a net gain after the cost of the gift. But then again, maybe all that work would lead to nothing but higher costs and warm fuzzies. I also have the suspicion that if HI directly purchased what people ordered then there would be lots of cute cheap bunnies and ducks and few ungainly expensive water buffalo and pigs (or $500 cows). The comment threads on MetaFilter and other blogs discussing the video are pretty interesting.
Part of people’s disappointment may be tied up in the “I purchased a sheep in your name for a needy family” style x-mas or birthday gift. It doesn’t seem as cool or generous when there is no actual sheep tied to that specific donation. I loved Miss Manners take on this.
Well, I think I have rambled on long enough …