So no charities in the United States are really worth my dollar$. Most of them either solve problems that don’t really exist or are so scandal-ridden the federal government would even do as good a job at solving the problem!
A few years ago there was a famous disappearance that theoretically could have been solved by early intervention by myself (or anyone willing to scout out around the neighborhood.) Only I was halfway across the country. I want to stop beating up myself for not intervening, when in most of the historical cases I would have wound up empty-handed or shot.
So I did a quick Google at Thai charities to solve perhaps the biggest problem that might be addressable by money, children sold into sex slavery. It’s more solvable in Thailand because they have enough of a democracy that laws could perhaps be enforced if people cared enough.
The only place I could find a website of apparently is a Christian charity that solves problems with a many pronged approach, working with authorities, and occasiionally with the girls’ owners to solve the problem. Perhaps I need to be more patient like them but I cannot just wash myself of the problem once I’ve thrown my other cheek, my guilders, at the theives of people.
How am I supposed to solve this problem, going meekly amongst evil will not help the world, you and your charge will both be murdered by the man. I would have long ago walked into a brothel and opened fire. The thought of slow-motion splashes of blood opening up on the skin of the tyrants is beautiful.
Perhaps if you told us what other causes interest you, we could tell you about U.S. charities that do solve problems that really exist and are not scandal-ridden.
You could also look at the Charity Navigator site and find out details about lots and lots of American charities.
I’d say the question raised in the OP is probably one which has been asked many a time by people associated in some way with the Holocaust, or even Pol Pot as another example. My point I guess is that (with any traumatic event beyond our control) the despair can sometimes seem overwhelming, but if you look and see how other people have bounced through and then gone on to doing powerful things with their lives, I reckon you’d get great inspiration from their stories.
Just a thought. Yeah, and don’t post drunk. Rarely works!
I suggest you donate $14.95 to the “John_Stamos’_Left_Ear Wants To Stay But Not Pay” charity. It’s not tax deductable, but I can promise that no children will be sold as sex slaves.
A couple seconds spent Googling “charity Third world agriculture” turned up this list, for instance.
The Charity Navigator also has charities (though US-based it seems, which may not for some reason be acceptable to you) which handle issues like supporting agrigulture in foreign countries. Take the 3-star ACCION International, “ACCION International gives people the tools they need to work their way out of poverty. By providing “micro” loans and business training to poor women and men who start their own businesses, ACCION’s partner lending organizations help people work their own way up the economic ladder, with dignity and pride. ACCION International was founded in 1961 to address the desperate poverty in Latin America’s cities. Begun as a student-run volunteer effort in the shantytowns of Caracas, ACCION today is one of the premier microfinance organizations in the world, with a network of lending affiliates that spans Latin America, the United States and Africa. Over the last four decades, ACCION has built a tradition of developing innovative solutions to poverty.” I found that by searching on “agriculture” on Charity Navigator, and that’s just one of the 107 hits for that term, so surely others will fit your definition as well.
Since this thread has turned into practical suggestions for finding worthwhile charities, I’m going to change the title to something more useful and send it over to IMHO.
My fellow lefties may want to check out the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee). They’d get most of my charity dollars even if I weren’t a Quaker.
I give to the Carter Center, Doctors Without Borders, and I’m giving my parents a water buffalo to poor people from the Heifer Project for Christmas. These are all very well rated charities with very small advertising budgets. Do you know that the Carter Center has largely eradicated the guinea worm from parts of Africa? They do very good work, and they help people help themselves.
I should say, for “U.S.-based” charities. The Carter Center and the Heifer Project both “pass”, but Medicins Sans Frontieres USA fails on one point, because “the chair of the board of directors is compensated”.
