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10 Easy, Free, Online Steps You Can Take To End Poverty

Growing Money Ethically“Nobody is asking us to love others more than we love ourselves,” said the “poet president” of Tanzania Julius Nyerere. “But those of us who have been lucky enough to receive a good education have a duty also to help to improve the well being of the community to which we belong; is part of loving ourselves!”

Step 1: Click once a day at TheHungerSite.com.

You’ll fund the donation of 1.1 cups of food. While you’re there, take a look at their equally worthy sister sites.

Step 2: Play at FreeRice.com.

Study for the GRE, test your English abilities, or simply bone up on your vocabulary. While you do, your clicks will generate funding for donating free rice to the hungry. Better yet, share this online game with students you know.

Step 3: Sign the petition at HelpSweden.org.

This tongue-in-cheek organization turns our concepts of poverty around and asks for a renewed commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. Read more about what makes HelpSweden a good idea.

Step 4: Put some of your paycheck into Kiva.org.

You’ll get your money back and you’ll have helped somebody to build a business or a home.

Step 5: Sign up and organize an event to end poverty at StandAgainstPoverty.org.

Read about other great events, get inspired, and then if you want, you can even host your own event and post an update about it on the website. I’ve organized similar events. They’re really not too difficult and in the end they’re a lot of fun.

Step 6: Buy Fair Trade foods and products.

OK, this one might cost a fraction more, but using your keen shopping sense can offset the difference. Everyone wants a fair deal. Show the world how it can be done by shopping ethically. Plus, shop online and save on transportation and time.

Step 7: Invest with Socially Responsible Investing in mind.

You’re responsible for what your money does. Your money can actually help the poor get richer while helping you get richer too. US-based Calvert and non-US-based Oiko credit are two examples of SRI investment.

Step 8: Instead of a bank, invest in a credit union.

Well, there’s at least one bank that’s doing a good thing. However, if you have your money in a faceless multinational bank, why not consider a cooperative credit union instead?

Step 9: Subscribe to a charity rewards credit card plan.

Charity credit card rewards plans are usually free of annual charges and they might actually make you feel good for a change about charging your purchases.

Step 10: Make Goodsearch.com your search engine.

Once you do, you can select the poverty-fighting organization of your choice as the target for the donations you’ll raise whilst surfing the web.

Read More About Poverty and Development Around the Globe

3 comments
  1. Steven Earl Salmony

    For a long time, I have been haunted by the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) that are emblazoned in a sonnet about Ozymandias.

    ” I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
    Nothing beside remains: round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away. ” —Schelley

    What was the “colossal wreck” this “king of kings” observed and how had it happened? What caused the destruction of the world?

    The calamity Ozymandias witnessed may not have been more or less than the incredible consequences of human greed having exceeded limits to its growth. That is to say, the adamant and relentless greediness of kings and self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe precipitated the gigantic, distinctly human-driven catastrophe to which The King of kings makes reference.

    A billion members of the human family exist on resources valued at less than one dollar per day. Africa is suffering from “slow drip” problems. Europe is getting warmer fast. Arctic ice is retreating and the arctic coast of Alaska is eroding.

    Where are the new ideas, the financial backing, and the innovations needed to address these problems? There are tens of trillions of dollars in the global human economy. Where has all that money gone?
    The front page of the NYTimes tells the family of humanity that we are on the verge of a global economic catastrophe. Are the taxpayers, acting alone, to become responsible for the problems now presented to the human community by the greed of a small group of rich and powerful people worldwide?
    Why are an astonishingly small number of greedy people, holding hundreds of billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains from what are now recognizable as patently unsustainable business models and Ponzi-like financial schemes, not taking responsibility for their avarice?

    Who are the people behind the mess we see splashed across the front pages of newspapers around the world this morning? Perhaps they need to be named, shamed and held to account.

    Some greedy people are easy to identify. They are ones who have proclaimed themselves “Masters of the Universe” or Bohemians or the Greedy Boys of Greenwich or the Bilderbergers or members of The Trilateral Commission or the many too many outrageously enriched ‘experts’ and politicians who say and do anything to enhance wealth and power of themselves and their benefactors.

    At least to me, it appears the problems in the global economy we are seeing today are the results of greed having reached its limits or, to put it another way, having “hit the wall” of unsustainability. That is to say, greediness of self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe and their minions has reached the point of greed’s unsustainability. The global economy can no longer support the conspicuous, patently unsustainable behavior of a small segment of the family of humanity.

    Yes, definitely yes, something new and different needs to be done. Bold action is needed; but, more of the same, old business-as-usual behavior appears insufficient. Limits need to be placed on patently unsustainable behavior. People who are responsible for the global economic mess need to account for their behavior.

    The family of humanity is not responsible for the world’s economic mess; but at the moment taxpayers worldwide are being held solely accountable. There is something not quite right about such unfair and inequitable circumstances.

    Steven Earl Salmony
    AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
    http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php

  2. sasha

    To add to step #6.

    One of my favourite stores is Ten Thousand Villages. Their moto …

    “At Ten Thousand Villages, we work with over 120
    artisan groups in more than 30 countries in Africa,
    Asia and Latin America to bring you fair trade
    jewelry, home decor, gifts and more. As one of the
    world’s oldest and largest fair trade organizations,
    we build long-term relationships with artisans that
    are based on mutual understanding and respect.
    Fair trade enables artisans to earn a fair wage and
    provides the opportunity for a better quality of life.”

    There stuff is amazing, and they have by far the best coffee I’ve ever had.

    Happy shopping

    http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/

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