December 17, 2003
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More cool linkage from WorldChanging:
There's a really great website called GlobalGiving.com. It's a big database of development projects around the world, and it allows you to contribute funds directly to those projects over the internet.
If you go and look at it, be sure and use the 'Find Project Wizard,' which is kind of cool in and of itself.
What astonishes me is that so many of these projects are ultra-cheap - less than $20,000. For instance: A rural microcredit project in Honduras needs $11,000. That money will get parceled out into chunks that seem tiny to an American, and lent at low interest rates, with the side-effect of pulling people out of poverty. Eleven grand!
Comments (4)
This is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. Thank you.
Now you see, THIS is a cool idea. THIS is the way it should be done. Targeted, independently managed aid projects. Individual contributions. No government red-tape, no bloated bureaucracy eating up 50% or better of the contributed cash.
Sej, the only innovation here is using the web to collect and disburse payments. You've always been free to give money directly to these projects.
Well, I was mainly talking up the idea these sort of smaller and leaner, targeted, independently managed aid projects as preferrable to the big MegaAid govt projects and NGOs where I feel their bureaucracy and general waste gobbles up too much of the money that could have gone to the people who need it.
True it's not earthshatteringly innovative, but alot of times it is the really simple ideas that can make a big impact. They give you a single place to go to find out about these projects most people would have never heard of and you increase their exposure and the chances for them to get donations.
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