The Life You Save (self aware liberal guilt edition)

[laeticiav]

The philosopher Peter Singer makes an excellent argument for the human moral imperative of helping others. If we want to be good people, says Singer, we need to give some of what we have to alleviate the misery of the world's poorest people.

The NY Times review, which gives a nice summary of his arguments and possible counter-arguments (the

Comments

[crybabymommie]

thanks for the links !!

[thanate]

I'm a fan of Heifer International, which Givewell doesn't seem to have an opinion on. There's another site out there that's been around longer which has more basic evaluations of organizations, including percentages of money used for their actual advertised services, vs staff and advertising and whatever else. If I could remember what it was (er, grauwulf knows...) I'd pass that on.

I've also been looking at Kiva which does micro-loans to people in developing countries, which seems like an interesting concept. You can pick who you're helping out (and only fund those who are doing things you approve of) and in theory if you put in a little bit this year, in a couple years it'll come back to you and you can lend it to someone else.

[kallos_kai_xaos]

With Kiva, I really like the interactive aspect of getting to pick who you lend to. In fact, I'm browsing through there right now trying to decide where to use the money that was repaid to me. :)

The only "problem" I've noticed is that once loans are posted to the site tend to get funded pretty darn quick, so there are times when the site doesn't have any loans up that you can lend to.

[laeticiav]

Thank you -- I'll look at both of those (Givewell has only analyzed 136 charities total, so there are a lot that they left out). I look at the other site too when you remember it :)

[aussiedolls]

giving to those who desperately need it is such a good thing to do, not just morally but spiritually.
we have been sponsoring a child in Swaziland for about 3 years now. It is so good to see the improvements we have contributed to in her comunity and to know we helped make a difference. It's now just part of the monthly budget and I couldn't imagine not doing it now!