About Invisible Children and other charities

This is why my parents, and probably other adults, always get on edge when I bring up a social cause. Because I’m an emotional teenager frustrated that by all of the awful things in the world that I can’t change and I’ll throw myself into a movement. That’s what we teenagers and college students are famous for. 

And that drive is wonderful. Young people’s spirit drives revolutions and movements and great things throughout history have come from young people who hadn’t yet settled into the norms of society and were anxious to do things for the world. 

But the passion behind these movements is just the first step. It’s vital to the process to spread awareness and get the issue out there, get people angry, and get people motivated to do something about it.

Invisible Children is obviously really good at this part. They’re filmmakers, they make people aware. But there’s obviously more to a solution than just knowing about the problem. And sharing their video across the internet is fantastic. But if you’re going to donate, please be thoroughly researched in the matter. 50% of the Invisible Children’s programming budget goes to spreading awareness, not actually helping the Uganda situation, according to their website. And this isn’t 50% of the budget, this is 50% of the programming budget. So according to the numbers on this website, only 40% of what you donate to Invisible Children goes to help anything directly. So go to something like Invisible Children to find out about the problem, and then find ways to donate directly or more directly to where the problem is. (Their website says the Schools for Schools program gives 90% of donations directly to help improve education, but that campaign is “currently inactive.”) 

(This information is all what I’ve been able to find out on my own. I’ve also read from reliable and not reliable sources about transparency issues with Invisible Children (i. e., they won’t share the details of what they’re doing, which is suspicious), but I haven’t been able to find a primary source for any of these claims.)

This is the problem with popular charities. They become popular and stay popular for a reason, and that reason is money. It’s important to let people know that they can donate to cancer research, but if you want your money to be used solely to cure cancer, then donate directly to a facility that does this, not the American Cancer Society.

I’m not trying to attack these charities. I’m just worried that people will get caught up in the sensationalism of the message and forget to think about practical solutions. Because there’s another problem with charities, especially in Africa. Poor African countries are corrupt and obviously dangerous. Also, us first world countries have a habit of “helping” these people before we fully understand the root of the problem, the best solution, and how our proposed solution might backfire in an entirely different direction.

I need to do more research on all this, but my roommate has ordered me to go to bed and I think it’s a reasonable suggestion at 2 am on a school night. 

I’m going to have to catch up on so much homework tomorrow…