I'm happy to announce that Action Against Hunger is the recipient of my tweet of the week donation! $103 went to their charity today to give food to malnourished children and provide people with access to safe drinking water.
For my Vision for Philanthropy paper, one of my core values that I wrote about was equality. For me, that was about the minimum standard of living, making sure that everyone has the basic necessities: food, water, and shelter. Equality is important because every one is human and every one deserves to live, even at the most basic level. So, having all the stuff I have and all the opportunities that people have here, I thought it was unjust to give locally while so many others don't have food or clean water.
The next step on my journey to decide was which charity to give to? After going on charity navigator and researching the different types of hunger relief international organizations, I settled on Action Against Hunger where 91% of my donation would go directly to the program. It received a four star rating on Charity Navigator 7 years in a row (66.51/70) and an "A" rating on CharityWatch.
I picked Action Against Hunger because I felt like it was the best, most direct way we could help the malnourished. They are "a global humanitarian organization committed to ending world hunger, works to save the lives of malnourished children while providing communities with access to safe water and sustainable solutions to hunger." They impact 40+ countries and 7 million people each year.
I thought it was a great non-profit to donate to. The problem with international charities is that you can never really be sure if your money is going where you think. With this charity, while I can't be entirely sure, I feel confident that most of the donation will be going to directly helping malnourished children.
I'm excited for us to give to this organization and impact so many lives.
After reading your post, I decided to go to the Action Against Hunger website, since your description of the group piqued my interest. Reading through their information (and the information about them on charity navigator) confirmed for me everything you said in your blog post, especially the data on how efficiently donation money gets put to use (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3212#.UxVQePldUuw). I really enjoyed how committed they are to transparency, with a whole section of their site dedicated to various evaluations of their programs. This information was very easy to find, not hidden away, and overwhelmingly positive:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.actionagainsthunger.org/media/program-evaluations
Another part of Action Against Hunger's mission that made me feel very positive about them was their commitment to a two-pronged approach to ending hunger. We have talked a lot in class about how important it is to be working on a permanent solution, while still addressing emergency issues. Action Against hunger highlights on their website that they are dedicated to both emergency aid (http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/impact/emergency-response)
and long term solutions to hunger, including supplying farming equipment and education (http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/impact/food-security-livelihoods).
All-in-all, the more I read about this organization, the more I like it. I think you made a great choice by donating your tweet of the week money to Action Against Hunger, and they are now definitely on my list of organizations that I plan on donating to.
I think you made a great choice with where you donated your money Charlie. One of my core values as well was equality of opportunity. While I focused more on making sure every person has the ability to use their own determination and drive to better themselves, this goes hand in hand with your idea of a minimum standard of living which I whore-heartedly agree with.
ReplyDeleteThe Charity Navigator and Charity Watch ratings this charity received are spectacular. You clearly put a lot of work into ensuring that your money would be put to good use. We've talked so much in class about how efficiency within the charity is very important to us, and 91% of funds going directly to the program is very impressive.
After visiting their website like Sarah did, their focus on root causes of the problem, or as Sarah put it "permanent solutions" is definitely what struck me. The biggest problem I always see with charities, especially international ones, is that because their focus is so varied and based on aid that it's rare for them to focus on root causes, which I believe is the more efficient charitable approach. All in all, I think you made an excellent choice in choosing Action Against Hunger to donate your well earned money to.