Tunde Wey is on a mission to “unfetter diners from the tedium of modern American cuisine.” The Nigerian-born chef came to the United States at age 16 with plans to become a doctor. But, after living in Detroit for 15 years, he finally realized that what he really wanted to do was cook.
Geographically just about the size of Texas, Nigeria’s population totals at about 150 million people. Since the country is the most populous in Africa, Wey always felt perplexed as to why food from his homeland was not more obtainable in the United States.
After co-founding a restaurant in Detroit, the Nigerian immigrant began his own “pop-up” restaurant. He aimed to explore America, as well as to introduce people to the food he grew up with. The name of his business, Lagos, is the name of his hometown in Nigeria.
With Greyhound busses as his primary mode of transportation, Wey impressed diners in New Orleans, Chicago and Buffalo and then headed for the East Coast. He would rent out different spaces, sometimes a restaurant and other times communal kitchens, and make his crowd a delicious feast. After continued success, his one-night, one-man restaurant started selling out.
Each night, the chef brought along with him a bag filled with cooking supplies such as alligator pepper seeds, calabash nutmeg and uda, which is a kind of pepper. Wey likened it to a doctor’s medicine bag. He had no formal training and mostly went by what he observed in his childhood kitchen.
“I learned how to cook from watching my parents, my aunt, a lot of YouTube videos… The benefit that I have is that I grew up with this food, so I know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like,” he said.
In fact, as he gained footing in his own kitchen, Wey became more and more aware of how much he missed his family, who he had not seen in over seven years. It is rare, but in some instances, children are sent over to the United States on their own and then later sponsor family members to emigrate and join them. Charitable groups and advocacy organizations help with this process.
Wey was getting major attention from top-notch chefs and was asked to go to Los Angeles to cook with celebrity chef Roy Choi in February 2015. But, his trip came to screeching halt when a team of border patrol agents stopped his Greyhound bus near El Paso, Texas. They discovered that his Nigerian passport had long expired.
It was back in 2007 when he allowed his student visa to expire. Wey said, “I just thought: I’ll fix this. I’m going to go back to school, finish and adjust my status somehow. And so it was something I kept putting off.” Nearly 50% of all illegal immigrants are in the same predicament. They let their visas expire and fail to renew them.
Wey spent a few months detained in El Paso and felt as though all of his success in America had hit a wall. Fortunately for him, he had a clean record and many friends and family members who managed to raise $6,000 to bail him out and keep him from being deported.
The backup in immigration court means that Wey’s appointment is not until 2017. A judge will then determine his fate: whether he can stay or whether he must say goodbye to all of his dreams and go back to Nigeria. Until then, he plans to keep cooking and has achieved a prime spot for a new restaurant in New Orleans’ St. Roch Market.
Wey is one of 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Immigration Studies. The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that illegal immigrants make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, Lagos, Metro Times, Eater, Laws, New York Times, Pew Research
Photo: Pinterest
Drug Wars Wounding HIV Prevention in Brazil
The strategy meant that citizens who would be caught using drugs, such as crack, would be sent to health facilities to be rehabbed, thus allowing law enforcement to deal with more pressing concerns, such as drug trafficking cartels.
Brazil is known to be one of the most dangerous and captivating places in the world. It is also one of the most active drug trafficking countries in the world. According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, Brazil has become the largest cocaine market in South America.
In 2014, the Brazilian government allocated over $2 billion on the “Crack: É Possível Vencer” law, which literally translates to “Crack: It Can Be Overcome.” The law is supposed to be managed by the healthcare, education and social justice ministry, but also includes funds for drug interdiction along Brazil’s borders.
Providing drug users with treatment would allow them to rejuvenate their life and help strengthen their communities. Unfortunately, standards such as the crack law have led to blurred policies that are crippling the healthcare system, specifically in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Police raids have led to many youths being incarcerated in the two cities. Most of these children are petty users or traffickers for bigger cartels. The police remove them off the streets and pressure them to feel that they need rehabilitation and treatment.
In turn, pressure from politicians in the city forces medical personnel to give these children medical treatment, even when it is unnecessary. Although it is campaigned as a successful and strategic method to clean up the city, it is in fact wasting precious resources that could be used to successfully fight problematic drug abuse or other diseases, such as HIV.
Brazil has one of the highest HIV rates in Latin America. This is troubling especially in light of the fact that it is considered to be one of the most developed countries in all of South and Central America. According to UNAIDS, Brazil, whose total population was about 200 million, had an HIV/AIDS population of 730,000 in 2013. Compare this to India, a country whose population is five times the size of Brazil’s but whose HIV/AIDS population is only 2.1 million.
HIV prevention and testing have suffered greatly due to these policies. There was a 32% increase in HIV testing between 2004 and 2013. By 2014, that progress had decreased by almost 13%. This is because resources are being strained by the drug prevention laws.
A shift in policies and implementation is needed in order to combat the real health issues in Brazil, which are diseases such as HIV. If the Brazilian government does not allocate resources correctly, the war on drugs will have failed on both fronts: Brazil will have failed to prevent both drugs from entering the country and HIV populations from increasing.
– Adnan Khalid
Sources: UNAIDS 1, UNAIDS 2, UNAIDS 3, UNODC, Washington Office of Latin America
Photo: WBUR
How Poverty Encourages Generational Prostitution in India
One percent of the population of women in India are sex workers, accounting for 6,230, 000 people. Among that population, over 90% of the sex workers experience generational prostitution. In the Indian culture, in some castes it is traditional to engage in familial prostitution. The caste system in India is quite strong, and, therefore, most children will never have the opportunity for education or non-sexually based work. Most sex workers are born into it. In many areas in India, women have very little chance to escape the ramifications of being poor, regardless of a caste system or not.
Prostitution in India is an accepted way of life and it is confirmed through societal norms. Generational prostitution occurs at almost every brothel. Most brothels are owned by women who were former sex workers, who now employ their children because sexually enslaving one’s children is seen as a means to avoid living in complete poverty. The sex industry provides a large amount of income for urban areas. In New Delhi alone, $2 million is the annual profit of the sex and brothel workers. The average client pays $2.
In the village of Nat Purwa, India, the population suffers from abject poverty. In this community, prostitution is considered to be a hereditary occupation, passed on from one generation of women to the next. As a result of the “family dimension” to the sex trade, men are often involved, which makes sex work an important aspect of the family economy. Women and female children who sell themselves are often the family’s only source of income. Women are purchased for 500 rupees, or $8, and girls aged between 12 and 16 are purchased for 2,000 rupees or $32 dollars. Other villages that are similar to Nat Purwa are Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Bedias, Faasi and Banjar.
Generational prostitution is occurring around the globe in various countries even outside the areas of Asia and Africa, where it occurs most often. In Russia, married women work as prostitutes in full view and with encouragement from their husbands. Often, a husband will suggest this type of work for his wife and any female children they have.
The issue of global poverty needs to be addressed in order to address issues of human rights injustices, including generational prostitution. Generations to come are predetermined to their fate of becoming sex workers. Efforts to end this epidemic have made many countries strengthen their laws against human sex trafficking, prostitution and the purchasing of sex. In both Sweden and Norway, the purchase of sexual services has been made illegal. Studies from those countries indicate that having these new laws has had a profound impact on demand, causing human sex trafficking to decrease significantly. Proven results in other countries indicate that methods to curtail sex working as a generational means of survival is feasible.
– Erika Wright
Sources: Al Jazeera, Ashraya, BBC, Global Issues, PBS, Swasthya Mundial
Photo: Business Insider
A New Face to Slavery: The Oil States’ Cheap Labor
Some states in the Middle East, such as Qatar, UAE and Saudia Arabia, have recently received exposure for their terrible treatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers coming from a variety of places in Asia and Africa. The exploitation of the workers is a return to conditions that have supposedly been outlawed internationally; conditions seem to fall on the spectrum of labor closer to the end labeled “slavery.”
Often times, these exploited workers actually pay thousands of dollars to “recruitment agencies” that then send them to states like Qatar with a job lined up. Upon arrival, their passports are taken from them, essentially prohibiting them from escaping what they will be exposed to next. The Kafala system ensures that these workers stay for at least two years and blocks overseas competition from encroaching upon this market.
Once these workers arrive, they are placed in labor camps, where sanitation is not part of their reality and overcrowding is the norm. This is the new face of slavery. It may be slightly less blatant, but it is essentially the same.
These poor migrant workers who come seeking good occupations are met with brutal conditions and hostility. The International Labor Organization estimates that 600,000 people have been subjected to these “forced labor” practices in the Middle East.
Around the world, the UAE and other nations that use cheap labor are becoming increasingly well known for their incredibly fast building times and the proliferation of skylines gleaming with luxurious towers, all built by these modern-day slaves. Grabbing headlines, Qatar has been in the spotlight for using migrant workers to build the massive amount of infrastructure needed to handle the mega-event of the World Cup. In addition to the horrid conditions they impose on these laborers, it is estimated that the death toll in the construction of World Cup infrastructure leading up to the event has exceeded 1,200 – a figure that outstrips all previous World Cup events. The massive loss of life in preparing for the event can be taken as a sign of the value that Qatar places on its migrant workers: they are expendable.
This system of forced labor is systematic in the Middle Eastern countries that take advantage of it. The backlash has not been as strong as it should be. It is quite possible that there has been a lack of serious backlash and serious reform due to the geopolitical positions of these oil states. Oil is a vital resource in the 21st century, and human rights are apparently not quite as high on the list of priorities.
The gross lack of appreciation of human lives and human rights in the states that make use of these modern-day slaves is enormous. The exploitation of workers who simply want to provide for their families is deplorable at best. As of 2014, some suspect that as many as 4,000 migrant workers may lose their lives in order to prepare Qatar for the World Cup.
– Martin Yim
Sources: The Economist, CNN, BBC 1, BBC 2
Photo: The Economist
Improved Data Standards Will Improve Development Efforts
Improving data standards for organizations, particularly those administering aid in countries abroad, will help elucidate the work being done and facilitate collaboration and communication between groups in different sectors. These standards also allow for interoperability, which is defined as the ability for technology and software systems to communicate, exchange data and use this data for researchers to draw conclusions about projects.
Needless to say, higher standards for information will improve the efficiency and speed with which organizations analyze and improve their efforts and also allow them to share their efforts with other groups who can replicate them. Doing so will not only improve the way information it is collected but it will also make it more widely available — improving access to and understanding of the latest projects organizations all over the world that they are engaging in.
In investments directly related to foreign aid, such as those in healthcare, education, agriculture and water access, higher data standards will allow organizations to share the outcomes of their projects with donors who can track the flow of their funding. They can also publicize their findings with other organizations that can then compare and collaborate to find more efficient, cost-effective solutions.
Something as seemingly small as transforming and improving the way with which organizations report their statistics can make drastic improvements to people’s health and way of life all over the world. Examples of this are logging administration and efficacy of immunizations, schools or communities with the highest risks, spread of disease and robustness of food resources. Interoperability allows organizations and donors to link up and improve the work they are doing.
Development Initiatives and Publish What You Find hope their data allows people to make more efficient use of data, whether by directing the flow of funding or improving aid projects. Efforts like these will improve access to information on development flows and therefore their efficiency. This project is ambitious in its design of overhauling sector-level systems, but the change it will bring about will be much broad, influencing the lives of people all over the world.
– Jenny Wheeler
Sources: Omidyar, Devinit
Photo: University of Mary Washington
Nigerian Immigrant Becomes a Successful US Chef
Geographically just about the size of Texas, Nigeria’s population totals at about 150 million people. Since the country is the most populous in Africa, Wey always felt perplexed as to why food from his homeland was not more obtainable in the United States.
After co-founding a restaurant in Detroit, the Nigerian immigrant began his own “pop-up” restaurant. He aimed to explore America, as well as to introduce people to the food he grew up with. The name of his business, Lagos, is the name of his hometown in Nigeria.
With Greyhound busses as his primary mode of transportation, Wey impressed diners in New Orleans, Chicago and Buffalo and then headed for the East Coast. He would rent out different spaces, sometimes a restaurant and other times communal kitchens, and make his crowd a delicious feast. After continued success, his one-night, one-man restaurant started selling out.
Each night, the chef brought along with him a bag filled with cooking supplies such as alligator pepper seeds, calabash nutmeg and uda, which is a kind of pepper. Wey likened it to a doctor’s medicine bag. He had no formal training and mostly went by what he observed in his childhood kitchen.
“I learned how to cook from watching my parents, my aunt, a lot of YouTube videos… The benefit that I have is that I grew up with this food, so I know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like,” he said.
In fact, as he gained footing in his own kitchen, Wey became more and more aware of how much he missed his family, who he had not seen in over seven years. It is rare, but in some instances, children are sent over to the United States on their own and then later sponsor family members to emigrate and join them. Charitable groups and advocacy organizations help with this process.
Wey was getting major attention from top-notch chefs and was asked to go to Los Angeles to cook with celebrity chef Roy Choi in February 2015. But, his trip came to screeching halt when a team of border patrol agents stopped his Greyhound bus near El Paso, Texas. They discovered that his Nigerian passport had long expired.
It was back in 2007 when he allowed his student visa to expire. Wey said, “I just thought: I’ll fix this. I’m going to go back to school, finish and adjust my status somehow. And so it was something I kept putting off.” Nearly 50% of all illegal immigrants are in the same predicament. They let their visas expire and fail to renew them.
Wey spent a few months detained in El Paso and felt as though all of his success in America had hit a wall. Fortunately for him, he had a clean record and many friends and family members who managed to raise $6,000 to bail him out and keep him from being deported.
The backup in immigration court means that Wey’s appointment is not until 2017. A judge will then determine his fate: whether he can stay or whether he must say goodbye to all of his dreams and go back to Nigeria. Until then, he plans to keep cooking and has achieved a prime spot for a new restaurant in New Orleans’ St. Roch Market.
Wey is one of 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Immigration Studies. The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that illegal immigrants make up 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, Lagos, Metro Times, Eater, Laws, New York Times, Pew Research
Photo: Pinterest
Biking Across Canada to Raise Funds for Female Farmers in Ghana
Former interns at the Mennonite Economic Development Associations, or MEDA, French and Fehr were both inspired by their experiences and have since topped $100,000 in their crowdfunding campaign approaching Ontario. “Complete strangers have opened their homes, hearts and wallets to provide a place to sleep, a complimentary meal or a friendly face in unfamiliar places,” said French. “We’ve met so many people who are inspired by our efforts and MEDA’s work. Mary and I in turn are equally touched by their generosity and kindness.”
During their internships with MEDA, both saw poverty firsthand, witnessing it in Nicaragua and even experiencing it for themselves in Tanzania. One issue that stuck out to them was the inequality that female workers faced. In both Nicaragua and Tanzania, many women worked to help support their families, but they either couldn’t contribute as much as men could or they were single parents, among other situations. French and Fehr saw an opportunity to help change that with a project called GROW, which stands for “Greater Rural Opportunities for Women.”
In order to help families grow, each member who is contributing financially should be able to reap fair benefits, no matter the gender. Check out http://www.meda.org/bike-to-grow to donate and find out more information about Bike to Grow. The journey ends September 1, 2015 in Newfoundland.
– Anna Brailow
Sources: MEDA 1, MEDA 2, Upbeat
Photo: Lsuag Center
Ending Child Marriage in Bangladesh
In October 2014, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, pledged that she would bring an end to child marriage of children under age 15 by the year 2021. She also promised to decrease the number of brides age 15-18 by a third and eventually end all child marriages by 2041.
Bangladesh made child marriage illegal back in 1929 and set the minimum age for marriage for girls at 18 in the 1980s. Unfortunately, the government neglects to legally enforce it or handle the problems that cause girls to get married so young.
HRW asks that the government authorize a plan to stop child marriages that would include required marriage registration for religions, an increase in national birth registration and help for young girls recently married or adults that were married below the minimum age.
Despite the government’s promises to tackle the problem, they have not followed through. Instead, it did not reply to HRW’s demands and Hasina has mentioned revising the Child Marriage Restraint Act (CMRA) by lowering the age limit for girls to just 16. The Act was originally passed to give family courts the ability to cancel marriages if necessary and mandate a penalty of two years in prison and a fine of Tk50,000 (US$647).
HRW responded in frustration, “The Bangladesh government has said some of the right things, but its proposal to lower the age of marriage for girls sends the opposite message. The government should act before another generation of girls is lost.”
HRW is not the only one displeased. Plan International Bangladesh, Save the Children and Girls Not Brides have all insisted that minimum age be left unchanged. Girls Not Brides is an organization made up of 450 members from more than 70 countries. They look to create national and global policies to bar child marriage.
HRW published a report, “Marry Before Your House is Swept Away,” that details the struggles of 59 girls and young women who were married before age 18 since 2010. One girl was married at just 10 years old. The 124-page report reveals what contributes to child marriage and how it affects these young brides. It contains interviews with parents and community leaders that help draw a larger picture of the situation.
In 2011, UNICEF estimates that 65 percent of women in Bangladesh aged 20 to 24 were married by the time they were 18, 29 percent by age 15. According to Girls Not Brides, one-third of girls worldwide are married before age 18. That is 5 million girls every year— 28 girls each minute. Some are as young as 8 years old.
In developing countries, girls are viewed as burdens to their families. It is one more person to feed, clothe, school, etc. The dowry a family must raise can be less if the girl is young and uneducated. Bangladesh is troubled with more natural disasters and effects from climate change than most other countries. These manage to bring people into worse poverty and even steal away their home and land.
Besides governmental intervention, education is necessary in the fight to stop child marriage. Studies find that when girls attend school for seven years or more, she marries, on average, four years later. Education is a source for empowerment, important skills and networks of support — essential tools needed to lift her family out of poverty.
The U.N. approved a resolution in November 2014 that encouraged countries to adopt new laws and policies to stop child marriages. Hopefully, laws to eliminate child marriage will be a part of the new Sustainable Development Goals to be implemented by the U.N. in September 2015.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: The Guardian, Girls Not Brides, Dhaka Tribune, HRW, Al Jazeera
Photo: The Guardian
USA Food Waste: 7 Surprising Facts
1. Let’s Talk Calories
The volume of American annual food waste might be better understood in terms of calories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that each year, a staggering 141 trillion calories are gone unconsumed. This is equivalent to around 1,300 calories per capita, per day. This is approximately the number of calories consumed by a small adult or child in a day, meaning that these wasted calories could go toward nourishing several hungry people.
2. Just How Much Food Is 141 Trillion Calories?
Not everyone likes to count calories, and even fewer know what exactly a calorie is. To put it in different terms, over a third of the entire U.S. annual food supply is wasted, a total of 133 billion pounds. That equals more than 20 pounds of food per person per month. Most everyone knows what pounds are, and that’s a lot of them.
3. Americans Waste Some Foods More Than Others
According to the USDA, the top three kinds of food thrown away in 2010 were dairy (25 billion pounds), vegetables (25 billion pounds) and grains (18.5 billion pounds). These are three of the essential food groups on the food pyramid.
4. The U.S. Navy Throws Away What It Can’t Fit In Its Boats
The government provides the brave men and women of the U.S. Navy with the food and drink necessary to make their sea excursions bearable, but sometimes it isn’t possible to get all the food that is given to them into the storage space of their vessels, which are often very small. One might suppose that when this happens the food is donated to a local homeless shelter or food bank.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Because the U.S. government could be held liable for any sickness that might result from the consumption of a donated food product, the Navy is forced instead to throw surplus provisions away. The extra microwave pizzas and cereal pouches might not seem like much, but this wasted food could be used to feed a family in need.
5. Americans Throw Out More Food Than Pretty Much Anything Else
Food waste makes up over a fifth of American garbage, and half of the waste accumulates at landfills. America tosses more food into the trash than paper, plastic, metal or glass—with 5 million tons as the smallest discrepancy.
6. Food Waste Hurts The Environment
The aforementioned landfills are filled with decomposing organic waste that produces methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide. These landfills are the largest producer of methane emissions in the United States, making up almost a quarter of the total emissions, according to the NRDC.
7. On the Bright Side…
The amount of food wasted, not only by the United States but by other nations as well, suggests that alleviating world hunger isn’t a matter of producing more food. Instead, it is a matter of better managing the food that is already produced, by preserving it and distributing it more thoroughly. There is enough food to feed all 7 billion people in the world. It just needs to get to put in mouths instead of in the trash.
– Katharine Pickle
Sources: NPR, Washington Post
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Malala Celebrates Birthday with New School for Syrian Girls
The Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School is supported by the Malala Fund, Yousafzai’s nonprofit organization, which believes every girl should be able to achieve her dreams through education. The school will serve 200 Syrian girls between the ages of 14 and 18 living in refugee camps in the Bekaa Valley region along the Lebanese border. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, Lebanon hosts more than 1 million of Syria’s 4 million refugees.
According to the Malala Fund’s blog, the school’s curriculum allows students to receive baccalaureate or vocational degrees through the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education. It also gives students who cannot commit to the four-year baccalaureate the option to receive skills that will aid them in finding work and generating their own incomes.
At the inauguration of the Malala Yousafzai All-Girls School, Yousafzi said “I am honored to mark my 18th birthday with the brave and inspiring girls of Syria. I am here on behalf of the 28 million children who are kept from the classroom because of armed conflict. Their courage and dedication to continue their schooling in difficult conditions inspires people around the world and it is our duty to stand by them […] On this day, I have a message for the leaders of this country, this region and the world — you are failing the Syrian people, especially Syria’s children. This is a heartbreaking tragedy—the world’s worst refugee crisis in decades.”
Malala also called on world leaders to invest in “books not bullets.” She had previously asked world leaders to give an additional $39 billion each year to secure 12 years of free schooling for children around the world. According to the Malala Fund:
Isn’t it time we changed that so the world’s poor can have the opportunity for a better life?
– Paula Acevedo
Sources: The Malala Fund, NPR, PBS
#Donate
#Donate: If the single most characteristic feature of the 21st century was chosen, social media would definitely be among the forerunners for the title. In the past decade especially, the advent of social media has taken over our lives. From MySpace to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et cetera, the world of social media has become grown exceptionally.
The takeover by social networking sites and apps is generally taken in a negative context. There is always a never-ending stream of criticisms directed at the virtual world. The critics often propagate the notion of social media desensitizing people to the real world problems. These arguments, while not entirely untrue, completely disregard social media’s potential for positive impact, if used wisely.
Recently, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge campaign received much media frenzy. It was also successful in raising awareness as well as donations for its cause. The “tagging” process, such as #Donate, through social media websites led to a massive campaign, which also involved many celebrities.
Popular Facebook page “Humans of New York” managed to raise $1.2 million in a campaign for an inner-city school. The catalyst-a viral photograph of an inspiring middle school boy.
A photograph of a Filipino boy doing his homework under the light of a McDonald’s restaurant posted on Facebook went viral, as it was shared almost 7,000 times. The significant number of people interested in contributing to the boy’s education led to the establishment of an online fundraising campaign. The campaign generated enough funds to cover nine-year old Daniel up till college.
These stories, and many more like these, establish the significance of social media in modern world activism. The creation of social media websites has enabled an unprecedented platform to create awareness for the issues in the world. Pages like GoFundMe or Network For Good allow for anyone and everyone to start fundraising campaigns for a cause they hold near and dear.
In the fast world of social media however, fundraising can sometimes become a challenge as well. The campaigns like the ALS fundraiser require the donor to go to a separate website and then donate. As easy as it is to type a web address and make a few simple clicks, it is still somewhat of a hassle for social media users. Mostly attuned to “liking” or commenting on statuses, the process of redirecting to other websites can be annoying for the users.
This has given rise to “slacktivism”—where “activists” on social networking websites become slackers in actual donation process. In the ALS campaign, for example, the donors were far outnumbered by the people who shared the videos.
To assist the users in donating quickly and efficiently, a Washington DC-based startup Good World has come up with an innovative idea. They partner with a network of nonprofit charities. Users need a one-time signup for Good World to contribute to any charity of their choice within their network. To donate, the users simply need a hashtag of donation and their choice of amount of contribution typed into the comments section.
The system of commenting also simplifies the process of further promoting the campaign. Instead of having to “share” their donation through separate websites, the comment can be directly viewed by the user’s friends. This also gives them a faster way to make a contribution by simply commenting on the thread. The web service also forwards tax-deductible receipts to the registered email address.
The service has certain caveats: almost five percent of the donated amount is automatically deducted to fund the technology itself. There is also a 2.2 percent processing fee associated with the service. The additional charges may serve to distance some users.
In spite of the challenges, Good World is a valuable innovation in ensuring our technology remains up to speed with our generosity.
– Atifah Safi
Sources: Good World, Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail, PBS, Washington Business Journal
Photo: The Guardian