Millionaire gives away fortune to microcredit charity

Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder decided to raffle his Alpine home, selling 21,999 lottery tickets priced at just £87 each.

All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans to Latin America and builds development aid strategies to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder said he felt "free, the opposite of heavy".

"For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," he said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years," said Mr Rabeder.

But he said he did not judge those who chose to keep their wealth. "I do not have the right to give any other person advice. I was just listening to the voice of my heart and soul."

YouTube 'brings sexy back' to charity work

YouTube's Video Volunteers page pairs deserving but underfunded charities with creative video producers willing to help them.

"The nonprofits aren't that sexy -- but we're trying to bring sexy back a little bit to the nonprofits," said YouTube spokesman Aaron Zamost.

The Video Volunteers page lets nonprofits post descriptions of projects for which they need videos produced. Video artists, in turn, can scroll the offerings and pick a cause they'd like to help.

Since October, the site has featured a particular issue each month. February's issue is health. The best videos get featured on YouTube's main page, giving massive exposure to both the charity and the video artist.

"We would love to think users just do it out of the kindness of their own hearts," said Ramya Raghavan, the nonprofits and activism manager at YouTube, who said she thinks that's usually the case. "But I think the incentive piece does help a lot."

Watch sample 1-minute video

Haiti still starving nearing a month after the earthquake

Bill Quigley, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, just returned from Haiti with this report:

You can walk down many of the streets of Port au Prince and see absolutely no evidence that the world community has helped Haiti. As many as a million people have still not received any international food assistance.

On February 4, the UN World Food Program reported they had given at least some food, mostly 55 pound bags of rice, to over a million people. The UN acknowledges that it still needs to reach another one million people. The 55 pounds of rice are expected to provide a two week food ration for a family. Beans and cooking oil are scheduled to come later.

The Associated Press reported that people in Haiti at small protests were holding up banners reading "Help us, we're starving."

Over a million people are displaced. About 10,000 families are in tents, the rest are living under sheets, blankets and tarps. One of the people living under a sheet is a brand new mother with her one day old baby. Rosalie Antoine, 33, and her one day old baby were living in a neighbor's yard in the Bel-Air neighborhood, along with puppies and chickens.

Congo: What does a poor country need to get aid? Publicity

Nicholas Kristoff writes in the New York Times:

Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs.

The barbaric civil war being waged in the Congo is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake. Yet no humanitarian crisis generates so little attention per million corpses, or such a pathetic international response.

A peer-reviewed study found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then.

This is a pointless war — now a dozen years old — driven by warlords, greed for minerals, ethnic tensions and complete impunity. While there is plenty of fault to go around, Rwanda has long played a particularly troubling role in many ways, including support for one of the militias. Rwanda’s government is dazzlingly successful at home, but next door in Congo, it appears complicit in war crimes.

It’s time to show the same compassion toward Congo that we have toward Haiti.

Seven-year-old raises $200,000 for Haiti victims

Seven-year-old Charlie Simpson from Fulham, west London had hoped to raise just £500 for UNICEF's earthquake appeal by cycling eight kilometers (five miles) around a local park, and ended up raising almost $200,000.

"My name is Charlie Simpson. I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives," said Simpson on his JustGiving page, a fundraising site which launched his efforts.

And with that simple call, messages of support flooded the site. "Such a big heart for a young boy, you're a little star!" wrote one supporter. "Well done Charlie. A real celebrity," said another.

David Bull, UNICEF UK executive director described Simpson's efforts as "very bold and innovative. … It shows he connects with and not only understands what children his own age must be going through in Haiti. … "The little seed -- his idea -- that he has planted has grown rapidly and his is a place well deserved in the humanitarian world.”

What donations not to send as humanitarian relief

As planes full of food and medical supplies sit at the airport in Haiti while hundreds of thousands of people are dehydrated, hungry and in dire need of medical aid, the challenges of helping others is made obvious to the world. The outpouring of global generosity is always impressive in emergency situations; yet, the inability to actually get the aid to the people who need it the most is a painful reality. Sadly, the intent to help others isn’t always enough. A few tips for individual donors:

1. Don’t send clothes or shoes, send money.
2. Don’t send baby formula, send money. “Baby formula,” Alanna Shaikh, an international relief and development expert working in Tajikistan writes, “does nothing for babies in the middle of a disaster and can even be fatal.”
3. Don’t send blankets, send money. Blankets require getting them to port, clearing them through customs, distributing them and deciding who gets them — when other organizations on the ground may have plenty of blankets already.
4. Even George Bush gets it. Referring to relief efforts in Haiti, he says: “I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water. Just send your cash.”
5. Water is heavy and bulky, takes up precious cargo space and requires distribution. Better to back an organization working to get emergency water systems up and running, experts say.

Every aid worker has a favorite story about useless donations. Raymond Offenheiser, the president of Oxfam America, recalled being in Bangladesh after a cyclone had killed 200,000 people and watching local women trying to make sense out of French TV dinners — “complete with croissant,” he said — that required a microwave.

Someone else has a story about the bewilderment of survivors of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras upon opening a box of donated high-heeled shoes, while another tells of the arrival in Congo of boxes of used toothbrushes, expired over-the-counter drugs and broken bicycles.

“There isn’t always a lot of thought that goes into these gifts,” Mr. Offenheiser said. “The impulse is just to do something, anything.”

Western Corruption within the corrupt Afghanistan War

The Afghanistan war is a breeding ground for corruption, and McClatchy Newspapers reports that it’s not just the corrupt Afghan government that’s feeding at the trough. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says about three-quarters of its active corruption investigations involved Westerners.

The Associated Press reports: The U.S. agency overseeing the multibillion dollar Afghanistan reconstruction effort is investigating 38 criminal cases ranging from contract fraud to theft – most involving non-Afghans, officials said…Just 10 of the criminal cases under the microscope involve Afghans only, while the rest involve U.S. and other foreigners, according to Raymond DiNunzio, the agency’s assistant inspector general for inspections.

U.S. and allied-nation official and private corruption helped set the stage for the venality of the Kabul government: After 9/11, American and western aid actually perpetrated this kind of corruption. Because this kind of subcontracting that went on, the wastage of aid, the fact that there was this concentration on the security sector rather than on winning hearts and minds in the social sector, all this created a climate of corruption which people in the Afghan govt. immediately latched onto and were the beneficiaries of. And they then perpetuated their own corruption. So you can’t just blame the corruption in Pakistan or Afghanistan on local people and local issues.

Bill Clinton’s pledge for Haiti

Three million people -- almost a third of Haiti's population-- need aid, making this one of the great humanitarian emergencies in the history of the Americas. What Haiti needs most now is money for water, food, shelter and basic medical supplies to bring immediate relief to those who are homeless, hungry and hurt.

The entire United Nations system is working hard to meet these needs and to regroup on the ground in Haiti after the collapse of our headquarters building and the loss of many of our colleagues. The U.S. government has pledged its full support to the recovery effort, as have the governments of many other nations.

Nongovernmental organizations and ordinary citizens have offered to help. Even small contributions will make a big difference in the aftermath of such destruction.

But after the emergency passes, the work of recovery and reconstruction will remain.

Last June, I accepted the role of U.N. special envoy for Haiti to help implement Haiti's long-term development plan by increasing foreign government assistance and private investment and by coordinating and increasing the contributions of nongovernmental groups involving more members of the Haitian Diaspora. This work helps create more jobs, better education, better health care, less deforestation and more clean energy for a nation in desperate need.

As we clear the rubble, we will create better tomorrows by building Haiti back better: with stronger buildings, better schools and health care; with more manufacturing and less deforestation; with more sustainable agriculture and clean energy.

[Bill Clinton, U.N. special envoy for Haiti, writing in Washington Post]

Charity gap in helping the needy

A study commissioned by Google.org and conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University claims that less than a third of U.S. tax-deductible donations target those in need.

The premise appears to be that the philanthropic expression of concern for the "needy" is measured by dollars allocated to immediate services.

But the charitable dollar that is allocated to education but not to scholarships is not therefore a dollar to the needy. A dollar allocated to an art museum is not charity because it is not allocated to art lessons for the poor. A dollar allocated to global cultural understanding is not adequate because it is not allocated to existing relief needs like Darfur.

The conclusion is that, while all giving is to be admired, American philanthropy is not always that well-positioned to make a real difference on the societal commons.

Record US aid is spent on war

Just before Christmas, President Obama signed into law one of the U.S.’s biggest aid pledges of the year. It was bound not for Africa or any of the many struggling countries on the World Bank's list.

It was a 10-year deal for $US2.77 billion to go to Israel in 2010, and a total of $US30 billion over the next decade, mainly to be spent on US military hardware. Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75 per cent of the aid to buy military devices made in the US.

For many years Israel has been the largest recipient of the US foreign-aid budget, followed by Egypt ($US1.75 billion) which also receives most of its assistance in tied military aid.

The big increase is in assistance to Pakistan, which was recently given an additional $US1.5 billion a year for the next five years, tripling its aid. (--Even though officials at the US embassy in Islamabad have alleged that Pakistan has diverted elsewhere 70 per cent of the $US9 billion in military assistance paid since 2001.)

Full story

Sour economy mean fewer people donating cars to charity

This year fewer people are donating used cars, partly because the recession is forcing them to drive their old cars longer, while others turned their rusting wheels into the Cash for Clunkers program.

The dwindling number of car donations, while not a major source of revenue for most nonprofits, couldn’t come at a worse time. Charities nowadays need every penny as overall donations shrink and the need for their services grow in a bad economy. Those who run car donation programs say they typically see a surge the week after Christmas because people want to be able to claim the charitable deduction this year.

The Salvation Army estimates that vehicle donations and related revenue nationwide are down at least 25 percent this year.

At the Animal Rescue League of Boston, Susan Ruderman said car donations … took a “definite dip’’ during Cash for Clunkers this summer. During the federal rebate program donations dropped off by an estimated 70 percent.

Even before the recession and Cash for Clunkers, car donations started shrinking in 2005 when the Internal Revenue Service made it harder for those donating a vehicle to predetermine how much money they might get back on their taxes. Previously, taxpayers could deduct the “fair market value’’ of their car. But under current rules, deductions typically are limited to what a charity realizes from the sale of the car, and that amount must be verified by the charity beforehand.

The most recent data published by the IRS show that from 2004 to 2006, the number of income tax returns reporting used car donations dropped 68 percent.

Celebrity philanthropy

In one-on-one interviews with Elton John, Ben Stiller, Madonna, Martha Stewart and Richard Branson, in CNN “American Morning” series, “Big Stars, Big Giving,” Alina Cho looks at celebrity philanthropy and how big stars can make a big impact.

Alina Cho writes:

"There are many famous people who just talk the talk, and then there are those who walk the walk – and do it in other people's shoes. They are the ones who really give back, and their generosity is helping change the world.

"We begin on Monday with the man I call the "original" – Sir Elton John. In 17 years, his Elton John AIDS Foundation has raised more than $150 million with programs in 55 countries.

"On Tuesday I talk with movie star Ben Stiller. He's using comedy and social media to raise awareness and money to build schools in Haiti.

"Then Madonna in a rare one-on-one interview. She's building a school for orphans in Malawi. Then there’s Martha Stewart, who built a center for aging Americans. And last, but certainly not least, Sir Richard Branson – the man behind the "Virgin" empire. He treats philanthropy like a business – identify a problem and solve it."