Help & Be Happier

Did you know that “prosocial spending”—spending money on other people—can increase your happiness?
(from Time magazine: "Being Generous Really Does Make You Happier")

Because I'm always giving cash-money directly to people in SlobKnob Alley (Em's name for our surroundings), I don't usually donate to relief organizations. But with the recent uptick in global nastiness, I decided I would send away some electronic money. Why not?

I. It's the Easiest Thing We Can DO, right? to write a check donate money online, for almost any amount.(Doctors without Borders has a minimum of 5 US dollars.)

Q: If you donate too, please tell me, what is your favorite charity? (Doesn't have to be international relief--I'm interested in any charity.)

To choose a charity, I looked at Charity Watch's Top Rated Charities for International Relief:
www.charitywatch.org/top-rated-charities/international-relief-development

I donated to two:

1. Doctors without Borders gets an A. (I especially like that their top salaries are "only" a quarter of a million/year--lots of charities pay double that.) They're in 70+ countries, including Congo.
I sent them $50.

2. Catholic Relief Services gets an A+.  They operate in more than 100 countries--you can donate specifically to Jerusalem/West Bank/Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, etc.
The girlettes like them because "they have toy altars" (?!), so I donated $50 to Where It's Needed Most: support.crs.org/donate/help-where-its-needed-most

________________________

II. Is the World . . . Awful/ Better/ Could be much better?

Yes.
I love this graphic from the wonderful Our World in Data––one of their thousands of charts to help understand the global situation––here, illustrating that all three views are true at once:

1. AWFUL: 5.9 million children die every year = 4.3% of all children.
2. MUCH BETTER: But in the past, 50% of children died.
3. Could Be EVEN Better Yet: In the European Union, fewer than half-of-1-percent (0.45%) of children die.

via ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better
____________________________

III. My new Lift Up My Heart policy is working--tho' it sputters...

This morning I wrote an ill-natured post about how we've forgotten Congo––we look where the atrocity mongers tell us to look––then I DELETED IT.  (I did sneak that little dig in though...)

I'll post a tiny bit of info:
Conflict in Congo (including conflict around mining minerals for your and my smart phones) leaves 5.5 MILLION+ displaced people as of 2023 (in a population of 91 million),
making it the fourth largest crisis of IDP [internally displaced people] in the world, per a report from the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

Congo doesn't get much news coverage in the US: I only know about it because I wrote a geography book for middle-schoolers on the country, and I check in every once in a while.