Though not strictly a charity, I'd choose to support the American Peace Corps. As a charitable agency, they are more broad in their offering of services than any other I can think of (they aren't limited to a region, they don't just give medical aid, they don't just teach, they don't just feed) and yet are as specialized as needs be to maximize effectiveness at a given site (if a village needs a bridge, they'll send engineers, who will also teach engineering and language). The teams they send are not sent only in times of emergency, and do not only stay until emercencies fade. Teams are committed to projects for two years, after which other teams will replace them if tasks remain undone. They are a secular agency, with a federal charter, and their selfless tenacity for problem-solving makes them perhaps the best ambassadors of peace and cooperation that the United States currently sends abroad. Perhaps most importantly, the Peace Core focuses on providing sustainable means of not only bare survival, but also of progress. They teach technical skills, language, and sustainable agriculture suited for the communities they aid. "Give a man a fish, and he will not go hungry today. Teach a man to fish, he will never go hungry."
If you wanted to contribute not to a federally funded organization, but to an independant charitable agency, the Full Belly Project is another international agency distributing simple public domain tools for sustainable agriculture and competitive productivity. The linchpin of their program is the universal peanut sheller, which increases the daily production of a single worker (often a woman or child) fifty fold. That may not sound impressive, but 10-12% of the world's population get their greatest amount of protein from peanut products. And peanuts are also a valuable source of trade, and are fully renewable crops through much of the world. If a person can eat, and work, a person can make a life. A dime a day could help. It really could. Forgive the long response, but this is the Yahoo! question that finally stirred something in me. Thanks.
2006-07-22 01:43:39
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answer #2
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answered by big Me 2
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