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