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Here are two great charities that accept BTC payments, and I'm sure they're not the only ones: https://supporters.eff.org/don... https://www.heifer.org/gift-ca...

A good start, but with a per capita GDP of ~$1100 USD, that's still a good chunk of money. Keep working on driving down costs, guys!

For $120, you can give the gift of GOAT .

How are we going to harness tech and knowledge to create a better world for our children and grand-children?

Is it really an improvement to have machines such as the ShapeOko: http://www.shapeoko.com/ rather than teaching children how to use a set of carving gouges, chisels, saws, &c.?

Is it inevitable that we will see the banning of commercial fishing as commercial hunting was out-lawed during our grand-parents' day?

What technologies or organizations are there which offer options for making the world a better place?

  - http://opensourceecology.org/ --- and their ``global village construction kit are one bright light --- arguably the ShapeOko has a place in that though.
  - http://www.heifer.org/ --- teach a man to fish and all that

Projects / charities to address that:

  - http://www.heifer.org/ --- give a child powdered milk and they'll drink for a day (if they have clean water), give their parents a breeding pair of cattle and they'll have milk for forever
  - http://opensourceecology.org/ --- provide people with the tools necessary to make the things they need to make their lives better

Had a link for a water filtration system, but not finding it....

By "toxic aid" I mean stuff sent to people in need that does them more harm than good. It's usually caused by emotionally charged quick-fix efforts. Look, for example, at the way clothing handouts to African communities have wiped out entire segments of local economies, putting weavers, dyers, printmakers, and clothing emporiums out of business and actually increasing the poverty in these communities - now everybody's got an American T-shirt, but fewer people have a job.

The best kind of aid is exemplified by the Heifer Project, and to a lesser extent by Habitat for Humanity. Teaching people to help themselves, and encouraging them to pay it forward instead of paying it back, lifts them into the self-supporting donor social caste, instead of maintaining them in debt and spreading poverty to their neighbors.

That's why Heifer International gets my charity money on a regular basis:

http://www.heifer.org/

http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/sanitation/

More than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes.

http://water.org/water-crisis/water-facts/water/

and food prices are volatile, but steadily increasing:

http://www.heifer.org/blog/2011/06/rising-food-prices-starve-or-sacrifice.html

I am a huge fan of the Heifer Project. Feeds people and provides sustainable lifestyles for them. Geeky in a maker-type, back to basics sort of way.

And Johnny deserves a plug, too, though he's a fairly small-scale charity. But he sets the standard for going and doing for others: Hackers for Charity.

Poverty in India (and elsewhere) is truly a horrific problem, one I hope becomes a more widely understood issue in the "privileged" world. However, I am curious as to this assertion:

About 35% of the population of India lives below the poverty line. FYI, the poverty line translates to $6 US a year!

World Bank estimates that ~24% of the Indian populace earns less than $1 per day, but $6 per year is orders of magnitude more dire. Now, estimates are estimates, and I am certainly willing to be corrected, but if the situation is so severe that reliable estimates vary by orders of magnitude, I would be interested to know about it.

Regardless, I think that the tremendous opportunity that this tablet may provide for whoever has the chance to make use of it could help the people involved innovate in really exciting ways. I look forward to hearing about the uses the devices are put to, because I know that many of them will be surprising and ingenious. Potentially, those innovations could help other impoverished people if similar programs are initiated in other countries. It sort of reminds me of a digital Heifer International, except that information replicates even faster than rabbits!

heifer.org + froogle = teh lulz ?

which is the goal of Heifer International:

http://www.heifer.org/

(Over 50% of the chickens in South Korea are descended from eggs donated after the Korean War)

William

for foodstuffs at any rate:

http://www.heifer.org/

Putting in a printing plant is an interesting idea, but needs a _lot_ of infrastructure (where do you get paper and ink from? printing plates? glue?).

The problem is, any sort of competitive printing press would quickly saturate and over-whelm the local market --- where do they sell to after the local school has a full set of textbooks (less than a month's production effort).

William

Goats produce much less CO2 than cows. Yes, I've looked into this; we donate to Heifer International but I only donate goats (not cows) for this reason.

Honestly, is that the best you can come up with Mr. Coward? I do actually eat plenty of eggs, I just buy them from a local farmer who pastures his chickens- and my favorite charity, to which I have set up an automated monthly donation, is Heifer International. So you see, I am putting my money where my mouth is, supporting my local community, AND helping the less fortunate. Awareness of suffering, both human and animal, is the first step to alleviating that suffering. The battery farms maintain the security of their income through the obscurity of their practices, something I thought a Slashdotter would reject.

There are ways to provide aid that don't rely on the method of just giving hand outs. For instance, Heifer International donates farm animals to families. They teach the family how to raise it, but the family has to take care of it. Kiva loans people money, and favors loans requested to start/improve a business. What's interesting about Kiva is that you see who you'd be donating to and what they want it for, and choose where your money goes. So there are options out there. Perhaps the problem isn't the act of donating; maybe it's just the model.

In other words, donate to Heifer International.
http://www.heifer.org/

We bought two South American families goats for the holidays. Hopefully their kids will have enough milk and cheese, and income from selling the extra, so that they can spend less time working for their food and more time using their OLPC PC.

Firethorn said:
>I like the idea of the loans to buy basic business stuff -
>like a cow, some chickens for a farmer somewhere. Money for
>a small tractor. Etc...

Then donate to Heifer International:

http://www.heifer.org/

What would be great would be if all of HI's animal husbandry educational materials could be loaded onto one of these laptops as a wiki....

William
(whose parish in Virginia donated an ``Ark'' every Christmas)

I read that OLPC was trying to team up with Heifers for Humanity, but Heifer balked when they demanded that each cow have a USB port installed.

You might be joking, but Heifer International isn't. They give animals to low income third-world areas, and when the animals mate, they pass some of the offspring on to other poor people. My grandparents donate a Flock of Ducks or Chicks from every grandchild in our family at Christmas.

You might be joking, but Heifer International isn't. They give animals to low income third-world areas, and when the animals mate, they pass some of the offspring on to other poor people. My grandparents donate a Flock of Ducks or Chicks from every grandchild in our family at Christmas.

You might be joking, but Heifer International isn't. They give animals to low income third-world areas, and when the animals mate, they pass some of the offspring on to other poor people. My grandparents donate a Flock of Ducks or Chicks from every grandchild in our family at Christmas.

You might be joking, but Heifer International isn't. They give animals to low income third-world areas, and when the animals mate, they pass some of the offspring on to other poor people. My grandparents donate a Flock of Ducks or Chicks from every grandchild in our family at Christmas.

I'm not sure what "the inspiration of this project may be diluted" means. Nobody on the project expects the machines to be invulnerable to theft, so I don't anticipate anyone getting disillusioned.

Some people will always steal. This does not matter to the project, it's not a project to stop theft; and since OLPC machines aren't going to be shipped into areas where it would make economic sense to steal them, their theft is unlikely to be profitable enough to endanger the project goals.

Get war-torn theocracies and starving African families out of your mind, they are not part of this project - there's another project for them, that involves keeping them from starving. The OLPC project is NOT dealing with cultures where people can routinely steal from children without repercussions.

Criticizing a do-gooder on the basis that the critic would prefer to use the do-gooder's resources in a different way is fundamentally flawed. That way lies paralysis and doing nothing. It's just a complicated way of saying "be reasonable--do things my way."

It's like criticizing the space program on the basis that it would be better to use the same resources to fight poverty in the U.S. That point is arguably true, but it's silly, because if we didn't have a space program the political reality is that those resources would not be used to fight poverty.

The altruistic impulse is not fungible. If you say to Negroponte "we don't want your laptops," he's not going to say, "Great, I'll just fold up the Media Lab and send all its funds to Oxfam."

I've faced this problem in deciding how to make personal charitable donations. How can one decide when there are so many worthy causes? How can one justify donating to the American Cancer Society when perhaps the American Heart Association would be a better use of resources? Is it frivolous to donate to the EFF instead of sending that money to UNICEF? The only answer is: these are the charities I donate to, you donate to whatever charities you wish.

Okay, setting aside worthiness or difficulties of the OLPC project[1], what other technological device could really help people in such straits then?

A while ago, I suggested a modular ``Safety core'' which would be a 10 x 10 foot cube which would contain solar cells, a water purifier, a pedal-powered generator, lights, radio, hydroponic garden (to at least provide for vitamin C needs), sleeping facilities a composting toilet and sink and water fountain and a pantry w/ say a 6 week supply of food staples and an assortment of seeds and gardening tools --- drop one off per family in a disaster area and one could be certain that each family would have food, shelter and security --- the question is, could they be produced affordably enough to make it feasible?

Or, how about a smaller cube which was just a hydroponic garden which could also generate electricity and condense water from the air?

Or perhaps Heifer International has the right idea?
http://www.heifer.org/

William
1 - I think it's a worthy idea so long as it doesn't detract from funds for immunization and basic medical care &c.

Well, if you really want to be charitable, you could also go to http://www.heifer.org/ , and for $300 sponsor a llama, a trio of rabbits, hive of honey bees, and a flock of geese.

But then you wouldn't get the cool OLPC, that they aren't supposed to sell in the US commercially...

$500? FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ?!!
And that's without even a game!

I can give a starving village in Africa a herd of four goats that would make them self-sufficient for that kind of money! (Hah, I bet you thought I was gonna say I could buy blowjobs for a year!...)

yeah, give the gift of GOAT! The gift that just keeps on giving.

I really like Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org./ You're giving the gift of self-sufficiency to people that really want it: participants ask for help, and recieve training, assistance in building livestock pens and equipment, and depending on their individual and community situation at least one female livestock animal appropriate to their environment. The only thing Heifer asks from the participants in return is that they pass on an equivalent gift to another needy family, in the form of training or the first female offspring of their gift animal. Heifer works all over the world, including the poorer areas of the United States: they have a map on their site that shows current active projects. Due to the nature of their work they have to be in fairly stable areas -you don't want your newly-gifted goats to be stolen and fed to soldiers after all- but those are often the regions that seem to need the most help and that no one know s_how_ to help.

If it helps build their credibility, Heifer has been a Motley Fool choise philanthopy for at least two years now.

While I hate giving this kind of argument any weight, just so you don't have any more excuses not to help those less fortunate (because you're clearly helping them by sitting on your ass) consider this charity...

Heard of Heifer International?

I donated this year. I still doubt you would give what you could, even armed with this information. To some extent, I do feel that the poor in this country could (with a great deal of effort) turn things around for themselves for the most part. But outside of the West, I don't believe that's always the case.

Laptop?! I think they'd get more use out of a llama!

This Christmas, give something meaningful. Give the gift of GOAT to a needy family.

I'm doing my part, so I think I've earned the right to spout. I donate more than a couple craptops worth of cash to Heifer each year. I like Heifer's approach, which emphasizes agricultural sustainability.

I'm not the only one that thinks laptops are a poor way to address poverty. In 2000, Bill Gates put a damper on the Digital Divide conference in Seattle with a similar message. When, as the article states, 80% of the world's population lives on less than a dollar a day, desiging them a $100 laptop is frivolous. If someone gave me a laptop worth three months of my salary, I'd put it on eBay in an instant and buy something I really needed.

Look at it this way. With $20, you could give a family a flock of chicks that could lay hundreds of eggs a year, providing them with additional protein and a source of trade income. For another $30, you can get two packs of Micropur tablets, which will treat 30 liters of water each. The tablets last for 3 years, so they can be saved for when it isn't possible to boil water. Another $30 could go to seed, rice, or lentils to give the family a little reserve. Then, spend the final $20 on whatever texts the kids need for their elementary school. $100 goes a lot farther when you're not spending it on computers.

The technological community has come up with much more creative ways to address poverty. I liked the clay pot refridgeration system for storing food that was mentioned on /. a while back. I read in Spectrum about a guy wiring villages in South America with solar-powered LED lighting so families wouldn't have to use kerosene lamps. The lamps are dangerous, the fuel is expensive, and the smoke causes searious health problems. I'd like to see more attention given to people with geniunely helpful ideas and less to Negroponte's schemes.

That's the general concept behind Heifer International. They give people livestock so that they may propogate their own food supply.

As to the wisdom of spending $50k on a cat - any cat - I'd say that it depends a lot on your overall financial picture.

Put a needy kid through college...or get a kitten.
Supply starving villagers with a herd of cattle...or get a kitten
Save a child from starving to death...or get a kitten

Regardless of how much you earn, I don't see how blowing money of a frivoulous project like this could ever be called wise.

Gotta disagree with you there friend. Heifer International has many options that don't require grains or much in the way of land. I personally like sending people a brace of rabbits, but there are beehives, trees, goats, sheep and pigs. Sure, everyone knows the 4lbs corn:1lb beef ratio that is so prevalent in vegan literature, but you have to remember that's the model of first-world agribusiness, not traditional farming. Heck, for most of the beef industry's history in the US, cattle were grass-fed. And people don't get much nourishment out of grass.

I believe they used this resource: Heifer.org

Check out Heifer International.

For under $25 you can give a gift to a hungry family that will help them sustain themselves for a lifetime. You buy "shares" of animals that the organization then gives to the family.

The gift recipient on your end ( mom, dad, sis, whoever) gets a card detailling your contribution in their name. Great stocking stuffers. Nothing says "I love you" like a share of water buffalo.

You must be joking.

Telemarketers exist, mostly, to reach into people's homes and harass them until they spend money on something they don't need.

Let me put forth a simple analogy.

Lemons are sold in my local grocery stores, of which there exist 5 or more within a 5 mile radius of my home. If I want lemons, I don't have much trouble finding and purchasing them.

Now along comes entrepreneur Bob. Bob realizes that by utilizing technology, and by sprinkling in some tough selling or irritant selling, he can steal marketshare away from my local grocery stores and sell the lemons himself.

Bob contracts out this cold calling of lemon pushers to bother me every few days. He probably does indeed sell some lemons, and probably at the expense of the local grocery stores.

In the end, all Bob has done is take money from the grocery stores and bother me at home.

So in other words, this industry exists only at a really shitty alternative to other methods of selling.

I cannot think of anything in my life that I have happily purchased from a telemarketer that cold-called me. I've given money to some charities that called me, but I have since stopped that since I learned that many use a shrink-wrapped telemarketing service that skims (or lops) 70% off the top for itself.

I now give my money to Heifer International, and I do it on my terms.

Telemarkers are worthless and unneeded in our modern, connected country.

As an aside, I think I should invent a cheap little phone device that you plug into your phone line, enter an 800 number of a company who telemarkets, and repeatedly calls them and puts them on hold. Perhaps if everyone who bought a TeleZapper bought one of my TeleBuster gadgets, the tables would be turned (in a most amusing way).

A better idea would be to give them a cow

Not to mention Heifer Project International has been teaching folks in the Third World(tm) how to do this for years on a small scale, mostly for cooking and heating fuel. Some livestock manure, a metal barrel with a lid, some water, and a rubber hose to siphon off the gas. Cheap, and efficient!

Some Dads are not entirely self-centered. Go figure. Some Dads are even (gasp!) socially aware. If your Pop fits the profile, try a gift in his name to one of these: Habitat for Humanity Save the Afghan Children RAWA The Heifer Project Southern Poverty Law Center Adopt a Solar Family in Guatemala Palestinian Red Crescent Maen David Adom

A gift ark:
http://catalog.heifer.org/giftark.cfm

Or anything else from the Heifer Project. Imagine being able to get your mom a goat for Christmas and having her be pleased...

I guess that's not very techy, but its a damn good present.

You're on the money with that one. Some things that most (all?) countries in sub-Saharan Africa could use:

• A stable government.
• A stable legal system. Without either of these, you will not be able to have:
• A stable business environment / stable economy. Even with "the foundations of law and democracy" this is difficult to achieve: look at Japan over the last 10 years, and Argentina/Brazil/Mexico over the last 2-5.
• Rid the government of corruption. This helps towards fixing the above.
• Allow the populace to educate, shelter, and feed themselves. This means anything from a handout to a "hand up", depending on which charity/NGO/whatever you are talking to. It doesn't really matter how it gets done as long as it all gets done (education is the big one for the long term, but it can't happen without the other two). None of this can take place in an environment in which the average Joe lives in fear of a) roving bands of thugs and b) government troops.
• Effective measures to prevent the spread of disease. AIDS is a big fear right now. Many children die daily of African sleeping sickness. Malaria is another huge killer. Malaria and one other disease which leads to blindness (blanking on the name right now) are preventable with drugs.
• Note that I haven't mentioned an IT infrastructure yet.
• Electricity? Yeah, right. Lagos, Nigeria will be the world's 3rd largest city by 2015, behind Tokyo and Bombay. The city is growing rapidly and none of the infrastructure can handle it. It is a big deal that certain companies in the city will be provided with 22h/day electricity at some point in the near future! You can't have an IT infrastructure on 22h/day of electricity (and don't expect 22h/day of "uninterrupted" service).
• Don't bother joining the geekcorps if you want to help Africa. Instead get involved with HFH, The Grameen Foundation, The Heifer Project, or any of a number of other fundamental-infrastructure-building organizations. I'm sure geekcorps does great things, but their efforts seem better directed at "second tier" nations that already have basic infrastructure laid and are ready to make the leap into the 20th (yes) century.

For a price of US$10 to US$500+, you can donate to one of the few global charities that puts by far most of its money toward helping people, instead of paying the executive directors outrageous salaries.

[http://heifer.org/] -- where you can donate everything from honeybees to heifers, to an impoverished third-world villages. The animals are not directly used for food: they will be used as breeding stock and the beginning of a business foundation that will ensure an increased standard of living for the community.

It's a good gig. Checkitout, and help make the world a better place.

--

• The Grameen Foundation
• The Heifer Project

There are many others...

-bluebomber

If you'd like to really make a difference, you might cruise over to [Heifer.org] and take a gander at their charity system.

They set villages up with livestock. They're used for labour, for their eggs/milk/fleece/whatever, or they're bred (for food).

Most impressive is the ratio of administration-to-assistance. Only about 8% of your donation goes toward administring the charity; another 16% goes to fundraising. The remaining 75% goes to the people that are being helped.

It's a lot better than most programs, where the ratios are often quite the reverse (most of the money going to paycheques for fatcat administrators).


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