African History 1.65 Charity

shelters and stuff like that but if we wanted to help a homeless person with

charity we'd help them directly like we'd go buy them a McRib or something [A man giving a homeless person a McRib]

because you know everybody deserves a McRib in general charity is a small

scale and situation specific way to help people no charity usually does not [traffic quickly going by on a big bridge]

develop whole economies or fix infrastructure but it can help

individuals folks be healthier better educated and more self-reliant the big

players in the charity game are nongovernmental organizations or NGOs as [a tree of hands symbolising non governmental organizations]

the name very subtly implies NGOs are not associated with any government got

that instead they provide social services free of charge typically to [NGO building on a map showing aid and services to places in the world]

people from all over the world most common charities in Africa are religious

there are the swarms of Christian missions and also the less common but

still around Islamic waqfs most religious organizations in Africa are [religious people stood outside a large temple]

awesome and helpful they provide food education and medical care to whoever

needs it even if the needy don't wear a hijabs or JD bracelets well some

stand-up examples are the Catholic missionaries of charity and the Islamic [christians holding signs outside a church]

Crescent of Hope organization unfortunately there are some religious

charities out there that rank significantly lower on the awesomeness

scale charities of all religions have been caught red-handed in money [charity worker arrested with red hands]

laundering schemes in Africa other religious NGOs have also been pressuring

governments to adopt from harsh policies like oh say abiding truth ministries to [judge rendering a ruling with a gavel in a court room]

encourage Uganda to institute the death penalty for LGBT people just what Uganda

needs more death secular or non-religious charities are a smaller but growing part

of the charity scene in Africa the most important one is the Bill and Melinda [Bill and Melinda Gates]

Gates Foundation yep that Bill and Melinda gates this

organization does a lot of good in africa by using its endless piles of [Bill Gates picking up a stack of money from an overflowing vault of cash]

cash to fund infrastructure projects and to try to stamp out malaria unlike Bill

Gates other major creation windows OS the foundation so far has avoided

randomly crashing we kid you bill good work secular charities MO is usually [Bill Gates helping a homeless person]

trying to solve a specific problem for example plan Canada found out that it's

hard for peasant farmers to get social services if they don't have a valid [farmer wandering in a field]

birth certificate so what did they do well they hired notaries to go make sure

people had legitimate certificates of birth who knew a notary could be a [notary worker handing over a birth certificate to a peasant farmer]

superhero and then there's engineers without borders who noticed that water

poor countries could get more water by drilling boreholes down to underground [a man drilling a borehole in the ground]

aquifer so guess what they did they wrote an existentialist play about it

no just kidding they sent engineers to boreholes down to underground aquifers yeah

so while not all charities and NGOs have lived up to the dream there are a bunch [asian people sitting in a line on the floor with food]

out there who are doing a ton of good on the local level they aren't going to

save an entire country all at the same time but they're going to do their best [Map of africa showing areas in green that are saved]

to help bit by bit and proving that we don't have to be Superman to make a

difference though being Superman would be pretty sweet [superman making a cup of coffee]