I need somebody, not just anybody.
February 2, 2010 11:03 PM   Subscribe

Yesterday marked three weeks since the earthquake in Haiti. Some have wondered what they can do. If you're like me, your medical or financial situation precludes that kind of aid - and makes you feel like a turd to boot. But there are still ways you can help Haiti, and the rest of the world, from home - and for free.

  • Free Rice is still going strong - just answer vocabulary questions and rice is donated via ad revenue to the World Food Programme. [previously]

  • In the same vein, Free Poverty donates water through a geography trivia game. [previously]

  • Blue Planet Run, on the other hand, focuses on funding wells and purification equipment through direct donations and sponsorship deals. Sign up, and they will send you occasional surveys that earn them $1-5. They also organize 6k walk/run fundraisers.

  • The World Community Grid, running on UC Berkeley's BOINC distributed computing platform, allows you to donate your extra computer cycles to cure diseases like muscular dystrophy, AIDS, and cancer. (yes, there is a Metafilter team) [previously]
  • posted by Evilspork (10 comments total)

    This post was deleted for the following reason: This is kind of a weird post and probably better dropped in an existing Haiti thread -- mathowie



     
    I know your heart is in the right place, but this is not a good metafilter post.
    posted by bigmusic at 11:06 PM on February 2, 2010


    Not that I make any decisions around here, but allow me to heartily disagree with you there, bigmusic.

    Thanks for putting these resources together, Evilspork.
    posted by yiftach at 11:16 PM on February 2, 2010


    I have to agree with BigMusic. This smacks of "Forward this email to a hundred of your friends, and Bill Gates will contribute $100."
    posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:23 PM on February 2, 2010


    Free Rice is a joke--there are almost 30,000 grains of rice in a pound. You aren't doing any good playing the rice game, you just feel like you are doing good. Worse yet, you then let yourself off the hook from making some kind of meaningful charity donation.

    Just get your credit card out and head over to UNICEF, people.
    posted by LarryC at 11:31 PM on February 2, 2010 [2 favorites]


    Just get your credit card out and head over to UNICEF, people.
    posted by LarryC


    Not everyone has a credit card.
    posted by Malice at 11:38 PM on February 2, 2010


    What's the difference between being worth -$120,513 and -$120,533, really?

    I dunno, dishonesty?
    posted by raysmj at 11:49 PM on February 2, 2010


    I take no position on the worthiness of the post, but I must say that BOINC is an excellent way to assuage that there liberal guilt (if you leave that there computator runnin' all the time).
    posted by Token Meme at 11:50 PM on February 2, 2010


    Seriously, it's going to be a long-term effort here. It will take Haiti well over a decade to recover. Why not just pay when you can more clearly afford it?
    posted by raysmj at 11:50 PM on February 2, 2010


    Because you don't actually have that money, and with our recession as deep as it is there is NO promise that you'll be able to pay that debt off in the near future. You'll just being paying the credit card companies more in interest payments down the line. It's not so much dishonest as dubious to tell people to spend credit card "money" on charitable donations. Write the banks that were bailed out by the government and now turning profits and ask them to donate monies, then spend you actually have money-money.
    posted by raysmj at 12:01 AM on February 3, 2010


    DO NOT ask people who are unemployed to donate monies via credit. Just don't.
    posted by raysmj at 12:04 AM on February 3, 2010


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