My feed is filled with bad news, which is my fault for using the fediverse as a news feed, but it made me wonder: Which organisations, groups or individual people in the world are doing the most good for our world? I’m particularly interested in those who manage to do good on a larger impact scale (quantity or quality), but if the unknown person on your street who fosters kittens is a great example, I’d love to hear about them too.
Mr. Rogers told me to look for the helpers in times of trouble. Tell me about your favorite helpers!
Yao Ming (an NBA basketball player) has, nearly single-handedly, saved the lives of tens of millions of sharks by simply asking citizens of China to stop eating shark fin soup. Since he started doing this, the price of shark fins has tanked, and 90+ percent of people surveyed in China support a ban on selling shark fins.
That is impressive! Sometimes you need a right figure to improve messaging.
The Great Green Wall initiative. They’re teaching farming methods that restore water tables and greening arid areas across middle Africa, stopping the advance of the Sahara desert. They supply the expertise and the materials, and locals do the work. In the process they’re also reversing the exodus of young people to the cities, because increased/improved agriculture provides jobs for them in their home villages.
Stunning initiative! Some real-life Dune ecology going on.
As you said, it’s not just the greening angle, they’re providing jobs and generational stability to the region, which is far more important than what would otherwise be a quick and short win.
Frank Hebert was an actual ecological consultant on top of being a writer. But yes, the scale of such a project is closer to sci-fi.
Maybe before, but not these days. They take donations claiming to help abortion rights, but also quietly admit they can’t defend them. https://www.jezebel.com/satanic-temple-abortion-rights-religious-exemption-real-1849073332 https://queersatanic.com/the-satanic-temple-cannot-help-you-get-an-abortion-and-it-does-not-deserve-your-support/
Plus the Temple was sued for harassment of it’s members/advocates. The people were linking publicly accessible info about the Temple’s internal issues and then sued for libel and defamation. https://www.newsweek.com/orgies-harassment-fraud-satanic-temple-rocked-accusations-lawsuit-1644042
Then when Newsweek covered the lawsuit, they themselves were sued for libel, when they literally showed that a lawsuit for telling the truth was being made in courts. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2022cv01343/575138/27/ https://casetext.com/case/the-satanic-temple-inc-v-newsweek-magazine-llc-12
TL;DR: The Satanic Temple sues you for telling publicly known truths about itself, and then takes money that could go to actual help for abortion rights.
Habitat for Humanity. People seem to shy away, thinking it’s a free house program for the utterly destitute. Nope!
They put people in affordable homes, with a legit mortgage, who otherwise might be shut out of the market.
Ex-wife started us on the program. We worked it, and I’m typing this from my forever home, $600/mo. and paid off in a total of 19-years. No property tax, no mortgage interest, cost of the home is what you sign for. And it’s brand new or totally gutted and redone. Most are new, appliances and all.
My credit was shit from medical debt, they don’t even look. BUT, you have to make a payment plan with every creditor, and pay on time. They don’t officially favor families, but I’m sure it helps. OTOH, old girl across the street got hers with her 85-yo momma.
We did 300-hours of classroom work and volunteering in the field. The Habitat Restore was our favorite Saturday afternoon. But we nailed and painted and laid sod as well. No, you don’t build your own home, you build your neighbor’s homes. Sodded and mounted my neighbor’s lawn and mailbox! Neat!
I’ll answer all I can, but programs vary from region to region. If you’re truly interested, email me: blade runner blues @ gmail. (My DMs are all jacked up on Lemmy, and I won’t see replies unless I remember to dig.)
Worst anyone can do is volunteer. I’ve never done such satisfying charity work. Call your local chapter!
And praise be to Jimmy Carter, blessing be unto him.
Holy shit, they’re even in new Zealand, too!
Where’s that? Ain’t on my map.
It’s an eastern state of Australia
I recently gave a brand new $3000 (usd) mattress and bed frame i wasn’t using to an old war veteran because i didn’t want to sell it. I made the phone call to a VFW and gave it to the guy who ran the bar. He was very grateful, he offered me 100$ but i told just give me $5 so i can grab a coffee on the ride home
Get a point for being bold enough to nominate yourself too.
I mean it, that was a cool thing to do and I’m glad you recognise it.
I just wanted to share
Thanks for helping out a person in need! I hope you’re able to keep doing so, and that should the situation ever arise, someone will be able to do the same for you.
Large scale wise, Doctors without Borders, World Health Organization, and the organizations that help fight for/track sex trafficked people to liberate them.
And within the US (I’m sure there’s others, I’m a yank so my understanding of how things in Germany/Canada/China/South Africa go is often poor) there’s the Electric Frontier Foundation, Meals on Wheels, Planned Parenthood, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and a lot more that help most citizens and biological beings get the right to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that isn’t actually given by any government.
Also Child’s Play and Make a Wish Foundation are pretty good for sick children to get some levity in a harsh childhood. I usually chip in some online donations/sale credits to Child’s Play and EFF so that they have entertainment when stuck in a hospital, and more digital rights for when they get out of it.
In a similar vein is the Against Malaria Foundation. Every two dollar donation buys a mosquito net that could save a life.
Herorats who are rats, that are trained to sniff out and locate landmines and tuberculosis.
Apparently there are only 200 of them, could use a whole lot more around the world.
That’s an interesting combination. Is there some similarity between landmines and tuberculosis that make them easier to detect?
I think there are landmine Herorats and TB Herorats, that have seperate jobs.
I’m pretty sure I heard of Golden Retrievers being used to sniff out TB also.
Any animal with a sufficiently capable sense of smell could probably be used. Rats are lighter weight for use around landmines, and generally cheaper to feed than dogs.
I work (part time/retired) for a nonprofit that coordinates and connects volunteer tutors with kids experiencing homelessness.
Never occurred to me (before I signed on) that kids in shelters or on the streets are still going to school while having to deal with no consistent “home” to do homework, irregular/unreliable sleep schedules, absent or overwhelmed parents, etc. Most Volunteer Tutors become important positive role models and a reliably supportive, adult presence in their lives, and the value is immeasurable.
I mostly help the org with marketing material — including editing videos with heartfelt testimonials and Thank-You messages from students — and I swear, most of the time I can barely hold it together to get the work done!
Well done giving these kids meaning and hope
Thank you for the work. Growing up poor and precariously housed, I used a lot of programs like these until I was a young adult really
Elon Musk, of course!
“I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on earth. What I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it - and what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil,” - Elon Musk
/s
It’s actually hilarious that he mentions “people who care about looking good while doing evil” because that’s basically his entire existence.
The way he’s doing for the environment is controversial (i.e. unnecessary drama on social media and news, and this list is long)
I don’t think the Musk hate is completely justified. Yes, he has awful takes, and yes, some of his projects are stinkers. However, you can’t deny that his projects have done a net good for humanity. He made electric vehicles commercially viable and got legacy car manufacturers to make their own, made huge progress in decreasing the cost of space launches, and is giving underserved areas high-speed internet. Each of those is difficult to do on their own, and his companies have done them all simultaneously.
He setup hyperloop to get the funding that should have gone to the high speed rail network of California, and then let it go bankrupt in order to sell more cars.
Isn’t CHSR already funded?
Also, Hyperloop was the stinker I was referring to
Electric vehicles are part of the problem. Definitely not part of the solution. Personal cars are incompatible with any realistic sustainability target. He actively sabotaged the development of public infrastructure to make profit out of his stupid cars. He’s evil as fuck.
New electric and plug-in hybrids are still better than new gas cars, and those are easier sells than high-speed rail unfortunately. People still want their Ford F150s.
We have not made any real progress on passenger rail until Biden came into office with the exceptions of California and Florida. Unless you can link a good source, I don’t buy that Musk singlehandedly delayed nationwide high-speed rail projects.
Not nation-wide, but definitely in California and he claimed that himself. Anyway, if you want to dig deeper: https://disconnect.blog/the-hyperloop-was-always-a-scam/
This but unironically. Tesla put electric vehicles on the map. Starship will change humanity forever, and Neuralink is already helping patients.
He’s not perfect (but hey, Von Braun was worse), but at least he’s actually doing stuff that matters.
I get your point, but he didn’t create Tesla, he bought it (as far as I know). So it could be argued that these things would be happening with or without him. But with him, he’s giving electric cars (at least, that brand) a bad name.
Given the amount of his personal wealth he put into Tesla and the financial tricks he pulled to get further funding (if what is said in Elon Musk by Ashley Vance is true), then it seems likely that Tesla would have gone bankrupt without him. Maybe any rich person could have done it, and electric cars would always eventually be on the trajectory they are now, but he was the rich person that actually did it. He should get some credit for that, I think. But it is right that he didn’t create Tesla, and he should definitely stop implying that he did, I agree with that.
If he pulled his funding like he did with OpenAI, they would have found funding somewhere else (like OpenAI)
The only thing he does is invest in all manners of companies, and once one of them becomes successful, he pretends like he is a founder and sues the actual founders if they disagree. Or he pulls funding because they don’t want him to be the CEO.
Guy is an egomaniac that only invests to make it seem he is a cool guy on the internet.
Back then they had no cars at all though.
But yeah he’s not personally building the rockets and engines, but he’s still far, far better than 99% of politicians and oligarchs who are just using the same money to go to Epstein’s island etc.
Sorry mate, you drunk the Koolaid. I hope you will see the much sadder reality of who he is and what he does, because you will learn to spot some well crafted propaganda.
all I can hear is a big fat boot being licked very thoroughly
He’s not going to give you a free car, no matter how much you defend him online.
I like to watch these rewilding, nature restoration or cleaning channels on YouTube. Like ocean cleanup, mossy earth etc.
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You are the kind of good folks that deserve to win the lottery a second time.
Thank you for doing this. A selfless act!
I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There’s a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I’ve had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it’s a huge impact on those people
So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it’s career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way
I’ll piggyback this and recommend teachsurfing.org
You can teach your skills all over the world. Get invited by institutes that need your skills. Run workshops etc. Or just learn stuff yourself from people visiting your own or close by cities.
I would stop fixating on who is doing the most good, like some kinda top 6 listicle of Humanity’s Most Positively Impactful Helpers, and just reach out to anyone who is helping.
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because help is multidimensional and we don’t know what metrics you personally consider more important (there is no objectivity here), 2) maybe I’m getting hung up on a word and have misunderstood you
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I appreciate your sentiment and hope you find a worthy cause to throw in with! :)
Oh it’s less a fixation and more an interest in scale of impact. There’s a lot of people out there who talk a big game but when you look at the results, they’re clearly underwhelming. Edit: or worse, they’re self-serving publicity not designed at all to do good. The blood donor in this thread is a great example of oversized impact, but that’s difficult to replicate. It does give good food for thought in terms of things to look for that could use more support.
The multidimensionality is why I didn’t provide any opening suggestions; I didn’t want to guide the answers. This was so that I might find some dimensions I had not previously considered, and I was curious about what metrics others use to measure “good” in the first place. Unfortunately Elon Musk as always proved to be a topic that generates more opinions.
Thanks for the support though. Honestly, there are a huge number of good choices already, more than I could ever dedicate enough to. I’m hopeful there are some gems out there that have potential to really offset some the vast quantity of suffering the world has to offer, this was just a small experiment in looking outside my own bubble of experience for them.
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Coalition for Rainforest Nations
They work with national governments, indigenous peoples, and local communities to create and audit rainforest protection programs. They also work to reforest areas and generally spread knowledge about rainforest ecosystems.
MacKenzie Scott giving away billions over the years, most recently this: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/business/mackenzie-scott-donates-640-million-open-call/index.html
Most of it has gone to “Social Justice” and groups pushing for racism, etc. sadly.
Ehhhh, I’m going to have to disagree on this. She’s obviously better than her ex-husband, but when you have that much money, the amount of interest/dividends it generates would likely offset her tax-deductible donations.
Also, if she has US$36.2 billion and has donated US$3.8 billion in 9 months, that would be like someone who has $100,000 donating $10500. Except you can’t generate much money from interest on $100,000. The average person donating 10.5% of their assets is praise-worthy, but there are millions of people who do that without CNN articles praising their philanthropy.
I’m looking for the people who are really helping, not dodging taxes and generating publicity for themselves.
Donating a 10th of your net worth in less than a year is huge. And it only offsets her taxes by as much as she donated. Best case scenario is she sold stocks, made a profit of $3.8 billion or less, and then didn’t pay any income taxes on those stocks. But either she was awarded those stocks and taxes would have been paid taxes when she received them (meaning, even if she didn’t pay the taxes herself, that she would have less total money now) or she bought them cheap and sold high, meaning more of the total amount is profit.
So even if she didn’t get taxed on the $200k she lived on that year, taxes for that $200k still would have been paid on the assets already.
The only exception for this is basically for income-like money that is in the lower tax brackets, which is an advantage that most people have and that impacts lower-income people a lot more in terms of total percentage of taxes paid.
If every billionaire donated 10% of their net worth each year to worthy causes, we’d be in a much better place. Not as good a place as if we didn’t have billionaires in the first place, but that’s not because of the billionaires - it’s because of the system that allows them to exist in the first place.
She’s also pledged to donate a full 50% of her net worth. That’s far more than she could ever benefit from in tax breaks.
You ask for good news to help you feel better and then when I try to offer some you criticize it? You’re certainly not one of the helpers. Mr Rogers would not be proud of you. Go back to doomscrolling then.
It wasn’t actually to help me feel better, I was hoping to offset some of the doom that is very widely covered by providing some much-needed attention for the people who are putting in real effort. I also hoped to learn about new people who I could support, because they don’t receive coverage from their public relations spokespeople putting out media releases that are pasted into articles by journalists.
Criticism of your suggestion is not an attack on you. I’m sorry that you felt it necessary to try to insult me for expressing a difference of opinion, and I hope your day improves.
I don’t care why someone does good, as long as it is something. Also, donating 10% of your income in one year is a huge donation.
