Helping, Giving, and Volunteerism:
Raising The World Up

Jacob W Meyer

Virginia College

Helping, Giving, Volunteerism: Raising the World Up

Contrary to news media's depressing forecast of homelessness, joblessness, and people out of work, as a global community we have improved. Charitable acts such as helping, giving, and volunteerism have been on the rise; through technology, globalization, and more people getting involved we have brought the standard of living in the world up over the last 30 years. In 1981 more than 50% of the world lived in absolute poverty – this is now down to about 14% (Rosner 2015). With all of the technology and globalization we do have to be more aware than ever when we give money to organizations that we are not familiar with, there are fake charities out there.
Technology has been the greatest way that we have brought people out of absolute poverty. Websites like causecast.com and e-volunteerism.com allow people to network and find others interested in helping. Casuecast.com allows companies to be more philanthropic. It allows companies to pick a charity and the employees can volunteer and give through there paychecks. It also allows companies and charities to connect on a wider scale. The fact that most soup kitchens and shelters now have an e-presence to enable people to more easily connect to the shelter or kitchen and volunteer time or donate money. We have churches that when missionaries do mission trips they can now email friends, share there journey on facebook, and ask for help through online social sites. This enables more people to see the experience of helping others and in turn they donate more money to the people able to give their time. Also in the churches with online presences people are able to connect to community projects, as well as overseas church planting/humanitarian missions. Other ways technology is improving the condition of people in other countries is through improved/ cheaper vaccines, better modular housing, and educational materials. Through cheaper vaccines we are seeing more people in third worlds surviving to provide for their families. Through better housing methods people in Africa are better protected from the harsh elements. Allowing them to not get sick or bitten by diseased ridden vermin. Educational materials such as the laptops that are being given to villages and allow them access to an encyclopedia are changing the very foundations of impoverished villages across the world. Allowing them to learn new agricultural techniques, new ways of electricity generation, and better sanitation techniques to reduce disease.
Through the globalization of the news media and the internet our response time as a global community when a disaster happens has also lead to better outcomes. Such as when the earthquake hit Haiti a few years ago. The United States, the United Nations, the Red Cross, and several other organizations jumped to Haiti’s aid. When third world countries have disasters the global community through technology and the internet are able to connect and help in a much faster times span. Organizations like the Red Cross that are all over the world can video conference to coordinate aid and volunteers. The Red Cross through their organizational processes can even lead the charge and direct smaller organizations that want to help out.
With the increase in globalization and internet charities it is far easier for scammers and con-artists to present false information as real. There are organizations and websites that monitor charities such as charitywatch.org. They provide free information on whether a charity is real or fake and also how they handle money. They have information such as how much the CEO makes, how they allocate there money, how there board of directors is setup, and how good there response time is when they respond to a crisis. How much money the CEO makes can be an important one for some people as to whether they want to give money to a cancer research organization when the CEO makes over $2 million a year. Also how they allocate money to help others such as The National Alliance to End Homlessness. For every dollar they bring in, only 6 cents goes to running and maintaining the program. The other 94 cents goes to the homeless. One of the most important things to note is that when donating money it is most important to be due diligent. If people would have done more investigating before just handing there money over it could have done more good for the citizens of Haiti. Such as the mishandled funds of Wycleff Jeane's charity, Yele, when the earthquake hit Haiti. Following the earthquake, Yele spent $9 million of its $16 million on office space, workers' salaries and other expenses(Daily Mail Reporter 2015).
All over the world through increased globalization, technological advancement, and more people getting involved we have seen extremely impoverished people's live improve over the last 30 years. In summation I believe that we are heading on the right path to help not just people in our own communities lives but, those around the worlds lives become enriched and come out of poverty.

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