Connecting Charitable Intent with the Needs of Communities

so

at newark academy we have an immersion

requirement where we’re asked to immerse

ourselves in another community

ask to create a better sense of the

world around us

now one of these opportunities is to go

on a service immersion

where you would go and do service in

predominantly developing nations

one of the things that you could do was

use a private program

and i saw trips to fiji to morocco

to nepal to costa rica really anywhere

that i could have thought of

yet as i was as i was looking into these

programs i came upon a negative review

somebody who said that they didn’t

really feel like their service did

anything

when i looked further into this i came

upon a common phenomenon

which some people like to call

voluntourism

now let’s look at a specific example

with orphanage community service

so a phenomenon that exists is that a

kidnapper in a developing nation will go

out and they will kidnap children

and then force them to pretend to be

orphans at that point a western service

organization will come in

they will work at this pretend orphanage

they will pay

the orphanage runner and the kidnapper

thus will profit

now when i first read about this i felt

powerless

i mean my intent was good my intent was

to do service to help out

kids who were living in that orphanage

yet my charitable intent was turned into

an exploitative measure

something that caused a phenomenon such

as the kidnapping of children in a

developing nation

so that’s when i first saw this crucial

gap

in our community service programming

being the divide between

intent and impact in community service

when we go into service we have

incredible intent

we want to do some good in the world we

want to help out

to mitigate income inequality or to

raise standard of living

yet often the programs that we’re using

the services that we take part in

are not matching our intent with its

impact

now it’s important to mention that this

is not an all-encompassing phenomenon

there are really good service programs

out there that will match your intent

with its impact

that will help and make the world a

better place

it’s the ones that don’t do that however

that are problematic

my goal throughout this presentation is

to help you to find those good programs

by the end of this i hope that you have

a toolkit to look to do research

and to find the good service

organizations to help you

achieve your service goals

now within this divide let’s look at two

examples

one who handles it well and one who

handles it poorly

we’re going to look at an organization

which shows you exactly how your intent

is found in its impact

and we’ll look at one who obscures that

so when i was first coming about this i

had an immediate question being

shouldn’t this be easier i mean in the

age of technology i can post a video

online and it will get

views from several different countries

in the same vein i can send my dollar

anywhere

so i’m thus no longer geographically

restricted in my community service

the follow-up question to that however

is whether because of this ease

and this access whether we’re doing our

research

are we actually looking into the

programs that we’re sending our money to

or is it so easy that we’re not doing

that work

so now for the examples let’s talk about

microfinance

the microfinance movement was

predominantly popular in 2007 and 2008

but it still exists all around the world

this movement is essentially said that

banks or privatized organizations in the

developing world

would set up what are called mfis or

microfinancing institutions

these mfis would then give out

incredibly small

loans to people in the developing nation

often

sponsored by your dollar that loan would

then be used to set up a business

at which point the person in the

developing nation could receive a

stream of income they could pay back the

loan and eventually the mfi would even

pay back the donor

so this is a flawless model right i mean

not only are you

letting somebody set up a business and

have lasting revenue rather than the

impact of just one donation

but you’re also going to eventually get

some part of your money back

well the problem with this comes when

you look at the fine print

it’s incredibly common for there to be

very high interest rates

on these micro credits and very short

buyback periods

these mfis also have an incredibly

common practice

in which they’ll group people together

which they say creates accountability

but also increases difficulties of

communication

with all the said and done it’s

incredibly common for people not to be

able to pay back their micro credits

actually creating debt recent data has

shown that

30 percent of micro credits taken out in

the developing world

we’re actually not used to create

businesses

but rather taken out to repay micro

debts

from other mfis

so how does this happen i mean when i

donate to an mfi

i have charitable intent i want to make

good

in the world however my charitable

intent

is then obscured and turned into an

exploitative measure something that can

create debt cycles

well the most common phenomenon that i

found that leads to something like this

is lack of research the question that i

have for you

is if people were truly doing their

research if people

looked into these micro credit programs

before they actually sent their money

away would they even exist in the first

place

people do service to be charitable so my

guess would be no

so let’s look at another organization

one who

minimizes this gap one who matches your

intent with its impact this

is the prasad project the prasad project

is an ngo or a non-governmental

organization

which functions to help out in the

developing world in several different

ways they create

project groups from whether it be a

self-help group for women

to increased access to healthcare

the important thing however that

connects to this idea

is that they’re incredibly transparent

about their practices and about where

your dollar is going

they have published financial statistics

which show you that they have

high project fundraising and that very

little of their money goes to

toward administrative or fundraising

costs but further than that their

project-based system

shows you exactly where your dollar is

going and how it’s being used

you’re able to literally see the impact

which is incredibly important if you

want to match your intent to it

they show you exactly how your

charitable intent

is found in the needs of the developing

world which is what we want

we want to see our intent matched with

its impact

that’s crucial within community service

we go into service to be charitable it

would be a bad thing

if our actions weren’t charitable in

nature

so now that we’ve established this

disconnect between

charitable intent and its impact in the

developing world

let’s go into two modern phenomenon

which i believe

have been broadening this gap two

phenomenon which have been making it

so that more and more our intent is

obscured from its impact

the first of which being technology as i

talked about in the beginning of this

presentation

it’s incredibly easy for me to donate

being that i would just have to go to a

website

put in my credit card information click

a button and the money would be gone

the question that follows up to that

however is whether we’re doing our

research

whether it’s so easy to donate that

people are not doing the work they need

to make sure that the programs that

they’re donating to

are doing good now further than that

often our online community service

programs look like

shopping retailers they look like amazon

i can send off my money and i click the

donate button

and it looks just like a pay button

i mean there’s been incredible data

that’s shown that you get a quick

dopamine shot when you click

when you click the buy button on a

website like amazon in fact a greater

dopamine shot

than that than that that you get when

the package actually arrives

so the follow-up question is shouldn’t

community service function that same way

if our community service websites look

so much like on online retailers

shouldn’t we get that same dopamine shot

now let’s look at two online service

programs

one who i think does it well and one who

obscures our intent

so this is feeding america feeding

america is a organization which works to

end hunger and homelessness in america

when you look at the website first you

see the big learn more button

that’s the biggest button on the screen

so it’s immediately asking you

to do your research it’s asking you to

look more

into the organization you’ll see also up

top that there’s a find a food bank

button

which not only gives you the uh so it

not only gives you the opportunity to

donate your money

but it also gives the op you the

opportunity to donate your time

finally at the top of the screen you see

the small red button that says donate

this of course should be there we want

people to donate but it’s small

and is first asking you to do the

research

this means that when the average person

comes upon this website

the first instinct will not be to go

straight to the donate button

but they will first actually go to do

the research

on the organization and this and to

decide whether it’s practically matching

their

intent with its impact

now let’s look at this online service

website

what we see is an incredibly saddening

image of a immigrant from idlib syria

followed by the ask for a donation

now i should preface this by saying that

we want people to donate

having more donations is not a bad thing

but we should be asking people

to likewise do their research on this

website

you would actually need to click out of

the donate button

to actually see what the organization is

doing

there is no practical information on how

they’re spending your money

how they’re helping families fleeing

from idlib syria

all you’re presented with is a saddening

image followed by the option to

insert your credit card information or

your paypal and send your money right

away

we want people to donate but we want

them to do their research

to make sure that their intent is

matched with its impact

so we can thus see why technology is

broadening the gap

now another thing that’s broadening this

gap in my opinion is that of

globalization

we can do service anywhere nowadays we

are no longer geographically

restricted not only because of online

service but because we can physically

travel across the world

this can be good and bad so i’m going to

use the example of house building but

this

applies to much beyond just house

building community

so let’s take two scenarios first

scenario

say that i am a well-established

construction man

who has much experience building houses

and knows what they’re doing

i go to a developing nation i build

houses

and then eventually i have to leave i’m

not able to actually

see the impact of those houses but i

know that with my construction abilities

the houses will stand up and they will

function properly because i’ve built

so many beforehand now say that i’m

me i’m a 17 year old high school student

who has no experience building any

houses

i go into the developing nation i do my

best attempt at building houses and then

i leave

i’m not able to see the impact of those

houses

and likewise i have no skills to back up

on

i have no skills that i can rely on to

know that my service was impactful

those houses could have fallen over for

all i have known they could have been

non-helpful in any way i have no way of

knowing

because i’m already back home it’s in

this way

that our international service is

incredibly skill dependent

it’s incredibly important that we have

the skills to back up our service

because if we don’t we can’t see whether

our service

actually had the impact that we wanted

when we don’t have the skills to rely on

it could be that our service is not

matching our intent that the impact is

actually

lessening the standard of living in this

in the developing community

but we wouldn’t know

so one more trap let’s talk about

buzzwords

buzzwords are terms that make you more

likely to donate because they’re

incredibly topical

or prominent in today’s society we saw

it on the on one of the

online service programs that i mentioned

before where it talked about fleeing

refugees

another is koved when we see words like

refugee or covid or anything that is

pressing to the moment now

we’re more likely to donate and this is

a good thing we should want people to

donate to topical service opportunities

being that they’re the most pressing and

the most necessary right now

we do have to make sure however that

when we see a buzzword

we still do our research we shouldn’t

see a community service organization

that says that they’re donating to

covet-based things and just

automatically send our money away

we should look into the organization see

what they’re doing

see how their practices are working look

at their financial transparency

and then make our decision to donate

don’t

look at a buzzword and send your money

away do the practical background

research

so now that we’ve established the

phenomenon why it’s broadening

let’s talk about what you can do about

it first

as you could probably have told for the

from this entire presentation

research research is incredibly

important in community service

being that it’s how we know that our

impact is matched by

our intent research is the

only way for us to see whether our

community service is

actually having the impact that we want

it to have

i implore you research the organizations

that you’re working with

research what they’re doing how they’re

doing it look at

their fundraising costs look at their

administrative costs

see whether what you want to happen is

what they’re actually doing

another thing to do is to look for traps

look to see whether they have any

published financial statistics

look to see whether it looks easy

whether the service

looks like you’re going to get it done

and over with very

quickly obviously none of these are

reasons not to do the service

there’s simply reasons to be on high

alert

take notice you could be right

now finally it’s incredibly important to

say that this is

all in your hands your service is your

property and you can do with it as you

please

you’re the one that has to do the

research you’re the one that has to look

into your service organizations

service is crucial in our world service

is what makes this world a better place

services how we can use our privilege to

better the world around us

it’s really important however that we

take that service

and we put it to good and we make sure

that our service is matching our intent

you can take back your community service

do the research

it’s in your hands thank you so much