My Take on "Global Help"

In Mondays Contemporary Moral Issues lecture the first group decided to present their project on the importance of charities, the work they do, and the necessity for them to be verified.  The group had the idea to start a network for different charities to make it easy to decide which ones you want to donate to. In their words, they were trying to make a Linked-In for charities. This would allow people to quickly and easily choose charities even if they are extremely lazy. The overall idea was very interesting, but the group hadn’t yet come up with all the parts to make it work. For example, the group couldn’t elaborate how to verify all the charities. However, this doesn’t seem like a big issue to me. The Huffington Post published an article with five different tips to verify if a charity is trustworthy.  The most common used being contacting the Better Business Bureau. A website that would do this for you and show you all the different types of verification would prove very useful for people who donate to different charities often.

Another issue with the project came when they were listing the regions you could donate to. These regions included Mexico, India, Honduras, The United States, and Africa. I would advise against developing a network that lets you give to charities based on the region you wish to donate to.  The problem with donating to specific regions is that it alienates us from people who don’t resemble or have proximity to us. This further pushes the narrative that people from different places are “others” instead of the same as us in a geographically different place. Instead, I recommend donating based on a certain issue. For example, if you lost someone to cancer, and feel inclined to give to people with cancer, then donate to an organization that helps everyone with cancer. Or if you want to save the children, then the website would recommend Save the Children, which saves children in all different regions.

Another suggestion I would give to them is to make their users accounts linked to an amazon account. Kind of like when you’re signing into another website and it asks you if you would like to sign in with google. This would save the user the extra step of making an account, also amazon would most likely do this because it would further integrate their business into other platforms, as well as make them look good in the public eye.

I would’ve also like to see a tab with different volunteering opportunities for charities in your area. It is important not just to give but to volunteer because it reminds us that the money we give is used to solve real problems. If we mindlessly give money then we run the risk of losing interest in helping people because we won’t see the effect our money has on the world.