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Tom Ough

The Ineffective Altruist: doing good when you’re a student

It’s the equivalent of offering to unload the dishwasher when secretly you know full well your mother has already done it. All the brownie points, none of the dirty hands. As a student member of Giving What We Can, you’re only expected to give 1% of your money to effective charities: perfect. See you in Heaven. And pass the beer.

So the first thing to bear in mind if you’re a student who wants to get involved is that it’s not all that daunting. Giving 1% is more about feeling part of the community and getting in the habit of giving regularly: 10% can wait till you’re a big dog graduate who wouldn’t dream of being part of the zombie-like horde which descends nightly, greedily on the Itsu closing-time sale.

If you’re already tucked in that proud Venn diagram overlap of sushi lover and bargain hunter, I have nothing to teach you. You are the Übermensch: gorge your cultured self on the Orient’s finest and spend the savings on malaria nets.

But if you’re an average schmuck who splashes out one week and can’t pay your library fines the next, listen up. You can make a difference without sacrificing the filthy drunken lifestyle to which you’re accustomed. Here’s how.

You’re not going to be wiping out schistosomiasis with a student loan (and if you are, for the love of God get in touch). So maximise your donation. There’s some 

 over how effective it is to take part in a matched giving scheme, but in general this is a good avenue to go down.

Particularly in universities, campaigns like the 

 – “You give ten pounds, and we’ll give ten pounds” – raise awareness and cash like nobody’s business. Rope clubs and societies in. Try getting university staff on board. It’s said that in life you get out what you put in, but with matched giving, you get double. Easy. And don’t forget that university is a great opportunity to get people thinking about the most effective ways of helping people: you’re surrounded by open-minded idealists with big futures ahead of them.

Military marksmen practise reloading their guns every day. Not because they’re worried Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is going to rush out of the showers, but because it ingrains the habit into them so that they don’t even have to think about it in a warzone.

This must be your approach to charitable giving. Get used to giving away a very small proportion of your earning as soon as you get them. However many bullets seem to riddle your bank account later in life, you’ll be spared some of the trauma of charity if giving comes naturally. And remember: regular donations are charities’ lifeblood. Everyone wins.

 to suggest that giving makes you happier. So if you’re not convinced that curing someone of a tropical disease for 50p is a good use of your money, it might interest you to know that donating will warm your black little heart enough to significantly increase your wellbeing in a variety of ways. We’re not very good at predicting how money will impact our individual happiness, but what we do know is that as long as you’re earning an average amount, getting more won’t make you feel much better – giving some of that money away is a much surer route to better health and happiness. It’s 

Olga Kuznetsova

How to combat mistrust of Western health workers?

When the Ebola epidemic spread through West Africa in 2014, humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross stepped in to help combat the outbreak. However, in some regions they were greeted with mistrust and hostility. In rural Guinea for instance, many believed that the Red Cross had fabricated stories about Ebola in order to steal body parts, and did not co-operate with advice on hygiene and safe burial practices [1]. In Liberia, there were rumours that Ebola had been intentionally brought to Africa by Western countries [2]. As a result, efforts to halt the spread of the disease were slowed down.

This is just one of many examples of mistrust towards Western aid workers, which both undermines ongoing health programs, and makes any programs planned for the future difficult to successfully implement. In order to tackle this attitude, it is first necessary to understand the often complex factors that cause it. This article will present several examples of the circumstances that breed mistrust, and discuss ways to move forward from this and develop a positive rapport with aid recipient countries.

Suspicion of Western health workers does not arise without reason. Cases of medical malpractice, unethical drug trials and espionage have bred mistrust in many parts of the world. We begin the discussion with a focus on Africa. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, there have been several high-profile examples of Western health workers deliberately harming or even killing African patients under the pretence of carrying out research, with some perpetrators going unpunished [3].

More recently, in 1996, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer went into northern Nigeria to carry out a trial for a new drug, named Trovan, against meningococcal meningitis. However, Pfizer faced allegations of ethical misconduct, including not warning African patients of potential side effects and carrying out the research without permission from an ethics committee [4]. An “illegal trial of an untested drug” damaged the reputation of Western pharma in Nigeria, and may have made the population mistrusting of future interventions, such as the polio vaccination campaign.

In 1996, the “Kick Polio Out of Africa” campaign set out to eradicate the disease by 2000, but despite intensive immunisation, surveillance and education, the campaign faced an obstacle. In 2003, religious leaders in northern Nigeria issued a boycott of the vaccination, claiming that the vaccine was contaminated with chemicals that cause infertility, cancer, and HIV [5]. The predominantly Muslim community in the north of the country was wary of Western motives after the war in the Middle East following the September 11 attacks, which they interpreted as a war against Islam. Incidentally, the boycott took place in the same region where Pfizer carried out the Trovan trial.

Another factor contributing to the mistrust is the shortage of even the most basic medicines in Nigeria, and the costs incurred in purchasing them. In such circumstances, an offer of free vaccination combined with an aggressive campaigning strategy was regarded as highly suspicious.

In a similar situation to that in Nigeria, a polio vaccination program in Pakistan was compromised in 2012-13, after Taliban leaders claimed that the program was a plot by the C.I.A. to sterilise Muslims. Some vaccination delivery teams faced violent assaults, including bomb attacks [6]. The hostility towards the vaccinators was also reflected in public opinion. Among the Pashtun ethnic group in Karachi, which displays a disproportionately high polio incidence, 28% of parents of under-fives did not participate in the polio immunisation, most of them due to the belief that the vaccine was harmful or unnecessary [7].

The suspicion arose after it was revealed that in 2011, the C.I.A. had sent a Pakistani doctor to Osama bin Laden’s compound to obtain blood samples from inhabitants under the cover of hepatitis B immunisation [8,9]. After the plot was exposed, the doctor was jailed for 33 years. However the damage was done, and the resulting setback in the polio program contributed to an increase of polio cases in Pakistan from 32 in 2007 to approximately 600 in 2012 [10]. Considering that global polio eradication was scheduled for the year 2000, the examples of Pakistan and Nigeria show how a single incident (or a compromised drug trial) can potentially reverse many years’ worth of progress.

A final example presented here is that of a political agenda gone wrong. From 2009, under the guise of various health and civic programs including an HIV prevention workshop, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent young Latin Americans to Cuba to mobilise potential political activists to stir up rebellion, destabilising the socialist regime [11].

In parallel, USAID funded a Twitter-like social network named ZunZuneo to allow easier communication in Cuba, a country where information and communications are severely restricted. Following allegations of covert operations, USAID, more known for providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief, responded that their actions had to be discreet to protect their staff in a politically-sensitive region, but were not illegal [12].

In all the cases presented above, mistrust towards Western health workers arose due to a lack of communication with native populations about the purpose and importance of the health program, or through a ‘boy who cried wolf’ scenario: a health intervention being used as a cover-up for espionage, breaking the trust for future projects. In the latter scenario, it is important to prevent such incidents from happening in the future. Indeed, the C.I.A. has already issued a statement promising to stop using vaccination programs to gather intelligence [11].

In the case of the Ebola outbreak, hostility towards the Red Cross workers eventually subsided after the workers started encouraging families of the victims to take part in the burials. Giving the families of the deceased a sense of autonomy and participation eased the tension and helped to build trust [1]. Additionally, it has been shown that mobilising trusted community health workers to talk to local populations and refute any conspiracies helped in improving cooperation [2].

The polio elimination program has had success in a number of countries, most notably India, which was declared polio-free in March 2014. Like Pakistan, India is a vast country with a large number of remote, difficult-to-reach communities that have in some cases refused the vaccine [10]. The success of the India immunisation program was partly due to the extensive social mobilisation, and engagement of community and religious leaders. In a study carried out in the Uttar Pradesh state in the north of India, it was shown that such activities resulted in increased vaccine coverage, lower rate of refusal, and a substantial drop in polio cases. An improvement in attitudes towards the vaccine was also observed in Pakistan after social mobilisation campaigns.

To conclude, a number of incidents caused by Western governmental organisations and large pharmaceutical companies have harmed the reputation of Western aid workers in the developing world. Governments and intelligence agencies must be fully aware of the ramifications of using health programs as cover-ups for gathering information. Likewise, tighter control of pharmaceutical trials would reduce incidents of malpractice that could damage the perception of Western aid.

In every case, extensive dialogue with aid recipient populations is essential to ensure understanding and cooperation, and this is best achieved through the engagement of community and religious leaders, who are in a position of trust and authority.

Science Daily: Returning West Africa researcher says distrust of health workers made ebola worse

Oxfam: Mistrust and confusion are allowing Ebola to thrive in West Africa

New York Times: why Africa fears western medicine

British Medical Journal: Pfizer accused of testing new drug without medical approval

PLOS Medicine: what led to the Nigerian boycott of the polio vaccination campaign?

The Independent: Taliban renews assault on Pakistani polio vaccination teams, killing two

Parental perceptions surrounding polio and self-reported non-participation in polio supplementary immunization activities in Karachi, Pakistan: a mixed methods study. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2012;90:822-830

New York Times: C.I.A. Vaccine Ruse May Have Harmed the War on Polio

New York Times: Fallout of Bin Laden Raid: Aid Groups in Pakistan Are Suspect

Achieving polio eradication: a review of health communication evidence and lessons learned in India and Pakistan. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2009;87:624-630

The Guardian: USAID programme used young Latin Americans to incite Cuba rebellion

Jess Whittlestone

New Year's Resolutions and Giving

In the first few days of January each year, people around the world set resolutions - things they’d like to change, start doing, or stop doing in the new year to come. The beginning of a new year provides a nice opportunity to take a step back and reflect on our lives. It provides a feeling of a “fresh start” - a renewed sense of hope that we can make positive changes, that we can do things differently.

Whenever I stop to think about how my life is going, I also try to remember to put it in perspective. While I might not have done as much exercise as I’d like this year, I am in the richest 5% of the world’s population. The fact that I’m able to worry about whether I should be shifting to a low-carb diet, or whether I should be doing more high-intensity exercise, is a sign of just how well-off I am. Because you know what I don’t have to worry about? Getting enough food to eat, or keeping a roof above my head, or catching malaria. If these worries so much as peaked their heads into my day-to-day life, I’d certainly be worrying a lot less about how much time I was spending meditating.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we’re wrong to think about these things, or that our problems are trivial. I think striving to improve yourself in every way is awesome, and that many people in the developed world face genuine struggles. But it’s also important to recognise that in most ways we are in an incredibly privileged position in the world. The fact that we are even able to set New Year’s resolutions is a sign of that.

an excellent video made by Cambridge University students

taking the Giving What We Can pledge as their New Year’s resolution

 - pledging to give 10% of their income over their life to the most cost-effective charities. For most of us, donating just 10% of our incomes would barely change our own lives - I’d still be in the top 6% of the world’s population, for example. And in fact, 

research suggests that giving actually makes our own lives happier

 - making giving more to charity a great resolution for improving your own life in 2015, too.

As with any New Year’s resolution, though, it’s important to make a commitment you’ll actually feel motivated by and be able to stick to. If you haven’t exercised once in the past year, resolving to go to the gym every day in 2015 might be a bit unrealistic. Similarly, donating 10% of your income might feel like too big a leap straight away. But it needn’t be all or nothing. When we’re building new habits - and donating to charity is in many ways like any other habit - initially it’s important to focus on small goals you’ll actually meet and feel good about. So if it feels more realistic to you to start by donating a smaller percentage, and to commit for a shorter period of time, 

 might be the perfect resolution - pledging to donate a percentage you choose for a certain period of time.

We needn’t face a choice between improving our own lives and improving the lives of others, because we can do both. So this January, as well as resolving to get fitter, eat better, and be more productive, I’m resolving to use my incredible position in the world to help others more - especially those who don’t have the privilege of being able to set New Year’s resolutions.

Roxanne Heston

Giving What We Can 2014 Year in Review

2014 has been the best year yet for Giving What We Can! To celebrate all of the collective progress we’ve made, here’s our year in review.

We have skyrocketed to over 800 members. That’s more than double the number we had at the end of last year, when we ended with 391! To put this in perspective, this is twice the already rapid speed of growth we experienced in 2013 when we grew over 50% in one year. Accordingly, the amount pledged has also risen from $147 million to $344 million. We have expanded from 15 chapters to 26, with additions appearing Europe, America, and worldwide. You can find the full list 

Our online presence has grown as well, with an ever-increasing number of likes on 

, and a similarly high newsletter subscribership. We published nearly 100 posts in 

a conversation with Alix Zwane of Evidence Action

, enabling members and non-members alike to give automatically to top-rated charities of their choice. Over its first year, over £300,000 was donated to it.

In April we launched our new website, complete with an updated 

 where anyone can keep track of donations. June took us to Wales for the third annual Weekend Away with the largest turnout yet, and July to All Souls College for the effective altruism-focussed 

, with a range of speakers from writer Larissa MacFarquhar from The New Yorker to researcher Jeremy Lauer of WHO-CHOICE.

We held our large September internship for two weeks, producing a range of new content and organization-building thanks to the efforts and new perspectives of the interns. After lots of discussion and input, we amended the wording of the pledge new members will be taking moving forward. In light of this change, members Ravi Patel and Luke Llott spearheaded 

 to encourage more members to join the community this December, resulting in unprecedented membership growth in the last month. We’re very grateful for their efforts, and those of the amazing team of students who worked with them!

We’ve had some personnel changes. We’ve been very lucky to be joined by Jonathan Courtney as Director of Community. As well as welcoming all our new members and reaching out to interested people, he’s been 

making videos about our recommended charities

 and travelling the country to visit Chapters and present on topics from the psychological effects of giving to charities combatting climate change. We’ve been sorry to lose Steph Crampin as our Director of Communications, who’s off to Bangalore to learn programming.

With events happening all around the world, local and remote 

, and loads of online content, there is a way for everyone to become more involved. If you haven’t already, we hope you join our community by 

 or contact us if you have questions or concerns. If you don’t yet feel ready to take the Pledge, 

 provides an opportunity to challenge yourself to give an amount of your choosing and see how it feels.

Thanks to all of you for your commitment to making a difference in the lives of others. Together we have already donated more than $5 million, helping hundreds of thousands worldwide. Here’s to another year of progress towards eradicating extreme poverty!

Stephanie Crampin

The Best Charitable Campaigns of 2014

2014 has seen the rise and success of many innovative and engaging campaigns encouraging people to donate to, and raising awareness of a range of charitable interventions. With mainstream charitable advertising proving lacklustre, these campaigns show social media, blogging and youtube can be used to create a huge driving force for good.

By far the most successful (and surprising) campaign of the year was the ubiquitous Ice Bucket Challenge. Over an incredibly short space of time, over one million people took part, raising over $100 million for the ALS association. The premise is simple: you dump a bucket of icy water on your head in front of a camera, donate to the ALS association, and nominate friends to do the same.

Bill Gates taking the ice bucket challenge. Source: Youtube.

It is already the stuff of legend how this phenomenon actually started. However, consensus falls on it being initiated by a crowd of friends, who challenged each other publicly to donate, and filmed themselves dumping cold water on their heads as a penalty if they failed to do so. As it took off, nominees began to both donate (an amount of their choice) and dump the water. Only later did the ALS association begin its official involvement.

The way in which the ALS association can capitalise on this is to engage and sustain the commitment of the donors that came to it through the Ice Bucket Challenge. Over half of the donors were new to the organisation, and if their generosity is sustained, it would spell an even more monumental success for the ALS association in the long term.

One other way the challenge can be said to have made a meaningful difference is the public discussion it started about the worthiness of the cause raised for. 

 with his critique of the good done by participating in the campaign, and others followed suit, even choosing other charities than ALS to give their Ice Bucket contributions to.

Another very successful challenge, with an even simpler premise. You snap a photograph of yourself with no makeup on, post it to facebook, and nominate your friends to do the same. The campaign raised £8 million for Cancer Research, and was all in all considered a great success. Again, this campaign was started between friends before being adopted by the charity they were supporting.

The #nomakeupselfie campaign was not short of criticism however. Some of the more damning remarks labelled it as 

, as well as being inherently sexist. The Independent writes that “From superfluous ‘no filter’ reminders to boasts of being bare faced in a profile pic, the pretence these images are for anything other than an onslaught of ‘natural beauty’ acclamations, coupled with pats on the back for ‘fighting the cause’ makes the no makeup selfie mania even harder to stomach.”

Despite these misgivings, I think the biggest shortfall of the No Makeup Challenge is reflected in the fact that the campaign actually 

 during its time. This is because both Cancer Research and Unicef used the same phone number to channel donations, and many sent the message ‘DONATE’ instead of ‘BEAT’. What this shows is that, while well meaning donations were being sent, many were giving little to no thought whether the donation was even being sent to the right place. The best thing you can do in this instance is to combine your reaction to a fundraiser with some serious thought about where your donations will have the most impact, as 

The two campaigns below are great examples of encouraging people to care about some of the world’s worst problems by putting them in a relatable context. I think it is important that we care equally about people everywhere in the world, so I find these campaigns particularly impressive.

Thea, the Norwegian child bride. Source: The Independent.

A simple idea became a powerful campaign against child marriage. It centred around Thea, a 12 year old Norwegian girl who was soon to be married to a 37 year old man. As she filled her blog with photos of her wedding dress, and stories of her wilting plans to one day be a vet, messages of support and horror grew in volume, and momentum grew around stopping the marriage taking place.

, run by Plan Norway in order to raise awareness for actual instances of child marriage, that happen throughout the world at an alarming rate of one every two seconds. “Through Thea's blog, Plan Norway has told a story that affected 39,000 girls every single day. The blog became the biggest in Norway in less than 12 hours, and is now read by over one million people.”

Giving What We Can’s review of child marriage

, we found that it was a hugely damaging practice, and one intimately connected with harmful and unhealthy attitudes to women. It is great to see the issue being presented in a concrete and actionable way.

To bring the Syrian civil war home to a UK audience, Save the Children developed this powerful and saddening advert, to show the effects of civil war on a girl living in the UK. Between birthdays she loses her home and her father, and life ends up looking bleak. The video has reached over 40 million people so far, and is another great example of how an issue that seems disconnected can be communicated effectively.

At Giving What We Can, our community of members is comprised of people who all care deeply and empathise with improving the lives of others around the world. When talking to others about giving more effectively, putting the needs of others in a relatable context such as this can be a great and persuasive way to present the issues.

Stephanie Tam

GOOD READS: 6 Books, Poems, and Essays Inspiring Thoughtful Giving

This holiday season, I would like to recommend 6 reads that inspire thoughtful giving to warm up with on a cold, wintry day. While the needs of others may seem distant from our comfortable curl by the fire, there is no season like the present for hospitality, and we can begin by welcoming the wisdom and words of others into our homes – inviting not only the potential for transforming other lives, but also opening our own to the possibility of being transformed.

Extreme poverty contributes to a host of problems around the world, including limited access to clean drinking water, poor education and literacy rates, and death by preventable diseases. [1] But while these problems may seem overwhelming, evidence suggests that your thoughtful giving – the careful selection of social interventions and programs you support – can actually have a real impact improving the lives of others in the fields of education and health. [2] From a domestic short story about giving between lovers to a novel based on the true story of a Sudanese refugee, these reads challenge us to expand our charity and comfort zones.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘Kindness’: A Poem [3]

First up, we have Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, ‘Kindness’, which invites us to begin the journey of caring for others through opening ourselves up to the possibility of loss: ‘Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things . . . ’

Certainly, there is a sense in which the very ability to give is a profound privilege – it may be ‘better to give than to receive’ – but the reality remains that behind every gift is a loss, and such a loss can be difficult to appreciate as privilege without its lived experience. Nye’s words highlight the wisdom that our own giving is enriched by a personal knowledge of the world in all its beauty and poverty, to walk in the footsteps of strangers and discover ‘how desolate the landscape can be / between the regions of kindness.’

O’Henry’s ‘The Gift of the Magi’: A Short Story [4]

‘Charity begins at home’, goes the clichéd proverb, and so we come next to a short story about domestic love in O’Henry’s short story ‘The Gift of the Magi’. A Christmas classic, the narrative begins with Della’s dilemma of what to buy her beloved husband for Christmas with a meagre $1.87. The story is a sweet if somewhat sentimental read, following the couple’s attempt to sacrifice their own prized possessions to buy a gift for their beloved.

In a contemporary culture grown cynical about the consumerism of the winter holiday season, this little story casts consequence to the wind, focusing instead on the charitable orientation of the heart that gives – ‘charity at home’ in both the metaphorical and literal sense.

Dave Eggers’s What is the What: Based on a True Story [5]

What is the What is a novel born out of an encounter between author Dave Eggers and Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, one of the 4,000 ‘Lost Boys’ who resettled in the United States after fleeing the violent devastation of their homes in southern Sudan. Eggers fictionalises Achak’s perspective, following Achak’s flight across South Sudan and his struggle for survival in a hostile landscape of wild animals, violent militia attacks, and aerial bombardments. A story of childhood tumultuously displaced civil war, it bears witness to the consequences of a horrific conflict later labelled genocide in 2002. [6]

The book demands the reader’s attention – ‘Do you have any idea? . . . Can you imagine?’ – even as it artfully commands it through masterful prose. The book is also a gift that gives: all of its proceeds go to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for those affected by the conflicts in Sudan. [7]

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky: Nonfiction/Journalism [8]

Expanding to the global, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky travels across ten different countries – Cambodia, Kenya, India, Sierra Leone, Somaliland, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Liberia and the United States – to tell the stories of extraordinary women and girls resisting oppression. This Pulitzer prize-winning team presents a simultaneously inspiring and heartrending case for considering gender inequality as the central moral challenge of the twenty-first century.

Investigating worldwide problems of sex trafficking, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality, Half the Sky provides compelling evidence for the urgency of the situation – interweaving statistics and stories to give a face to gender inequality. Highlighting the ways in which we can help even from a distance, it follows the work of several NGOs, charities, and other groups working to solve these problems.

Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother: An AIDS Memoir [9]

The question of distant suffering is personalised by Jamaica Kincaid’s AIDS memoir, My Brother. Her writing grapples with the trauma of her youngest brother’s death from the disease, revisiting memories of their childhood and her attempts to care for him. Concerned with the question of how to relate to the suffering of a man who is simultaneously family and stranger – she left home as a teenager, while he was just three years old – her writing negotiates feelings of pity, superiority, and confusion in caring for her brother.

‘I shall never forget him because his life is the one I did not have, the life that, for reasons I hope shall never be too clear to me, I avoided or escaped’, Jamaica Kincaid writes, reflecting that his fate could easily have been hers had she not left her impoverished family and Antigua to become a famous writher in the States through a combination of luck and talent.

The text draws attention to how the suffering of those in ‘developing countries’ is not so distant – how the major differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ may often be matters beyond our own achievement, gifts that we have not earned, but that can nonetheless become opportunities to give back.

David Foster Wallace’s ‘This Is Water’: An Essay [10]

Moving from heart to mind, David Foster Wallace’s essay adaptation of a commencement speech, ‘This Is Water’, encourages readers to cultivate generous modes of thinking. He calls our attention to the ways in which our default perception of the world is through a lens of egocentrism – the default and deep belief that we are the centres of our universe, a reality that we inhabit as unconsciously as fish inhabit water.

Examining a stressful, everyday experience – heavy traffic and long grocery lines – DFW proposes that we have the choice to read these situations through egocentric or altruistic mindsets. We have a choice to read such a situation with ‘the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home . . . like everybody else is just in my way’ or with the generous consideration that ‘the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick . . . in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am – it is actually I who am in his way.’

Though cultivating such generosity is by no means easy, the result may be a gift to ourselves as well as others. When we choose to think charitably, such tedious situations become transformed: we experience ‘a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars – compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.’

The fact remains that sympathy for literary characters does not necessarily translate to concern for real people, even as the practice of reading engages the imaginative exercise of empathy. But as David Foster Wallace suggests, the content of what we choose to read shapes the way we think and perceive the world, just as the way we choose to give shapes our impact on it. For at the end of the day, the thoughtful giver is one who is not only able to ‘read’ the world and recognise its problems, but who is also able to ‘read’ herself into its narrative – and recognise the subtle ways in which she may potentially contribute to it.

The World Bank’s 2014 report on World Development Indicators

The Guardian: a lost boy who found his voice

Blog

The Ineffective Altruist: doing good when you’re a student

How to combat mistrust of Western health workers?

New Year's Resolutions and Giving

Giving What We Can 2014 Year in Review

The Best Charitable Campaigns of 2014

GOOD READS: 6 Books, Poems, and Essays Inspiring Thoughtful Giving

The effective altruists of the Nobel Peace Prizes

Quadruple your donation to AMF- in praise of donation matching

Making the most of seasonal giving

The use and interpretation of evidence