07:00, 30 September 2024
Words by Tess Becker, Staff Writer, London
The world today is paradoxically at our fingertips and farther out of reach than ever. We can access information and news across oceans, learning about people and struggles that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed. While that can connect us as a united humanity, it can also instil a sense of hopelessness.
While we may feel incredibly hopeless and like we can’t make any substantial impact, one organization, The Life You Can Save, wants to provide the tools to make as wide of an impact as possible through a process called effective altruism. Their goal is to use a research-based approach that helps people donate their money in a way that helps the most possible people.
A clear way to look at it is to think of two charities, one works to help get individual people to get hearing aids in the US, while another is working on research to make hearing aids cheaper for all, meaning that more people can get hearing aids altogether. While one may directly put a hearing aid in someone’s hands, the other will provide affordable hearing aids to more people in the long run. Using effective altruism as a framework, the second one would be where you should spend your money.
Effective altruism found its beginning in the book, The Life You Can Save, by Peter Singer, which in turn inspired the organization of the same name.
Singer, along with Charlie Bresler started The Life You Can Save in 2013, brought together by a united idea about wanting to make a difference. Bresler, working as a psychologist and business executive read Singer’s work, and wanting to make a difference himself decided to help fund Singer’s endeavours.
In slight contrast, Bresler is inspired by what he calls effective hedonism instead of altruism. The main difference is that he doesn’t see providing help as a sacrifice or anything of the like, he instead sees it as something that brings him pleasure or joy.
“I'm pretty much interested in doing things that I really want to do,” Charlie tells Smiley News. “So, although altruism implies a certain amount of doing good for the benefit of other people, I think of doing things that I want to do. Anything I've done at The Life You Can Save, or helping other people, or seeing this person with this psychological problem, it's all because I want to do it.”
Singer was a Princeton-based philosopher when he and Bresler met and had written the book intending to encourage everyday people to consider their moral obligation to help people living in extreme poverty.
They focus on extreme poverty specifically instead of many of the other pressing issues around the world, because they feel that they can make a meaningful impact there. Things like racial inequity and climate change are structural issues that individuals may be able to influence without changing, where through their process they believe they can help donations help the most people.
“These charities are highly cost-effective and highly impactful, the ones that we choose,” Bresner says. “I feel like we could absolutely do something about [extreme poverty].”
“I felt like by working with Peter and growing the life you can save we could actually get some things accomplished, whereas I find tackling the other problems for me quite frustrating.”
And while accomplishing this they purely rely on grants and donor support, not bringing in any money through traditional means according to Bresner.
“We rely solely on people who want to support the operations and support our staff and other things that we do,” Bresner says.
As a result, “we have to constantly be in a fundraising mode.”
Their work isn’t strictly limited to financial support, but more closely focuses on other means of aid, like the aforementioned hearing aid example, or something like building access to clean drinking water.
“One of our recommended profits nonprofits [gives directly], and a lot of the nonprofits, part of what they do is financial aid, but a lot of what they do is maybe not financial aid, but things that lead to improving or saving lives through other means,” Bresner says.
The Life You Can Save has endorsed at least 21 different organizations since its founding, including Educate Girls, Innovations for Poverty Action, One Acre Fund, and many others. On the official pages for each of the charities, they highlight stats like how many people they’ve impacted, how many solutions to poverty they’ve evaluated, and how many countries they have staff in. They also do an in-depth description of the work each charity does, like explaining what makes a charity like Innovations for Poverty Action so successful.
The main goal of the Life You Can Save is to help people beyond anything else, as Bresner calls a “moral imperative.”
At Smiley Movement, we like to elevate the work of charities across the world. Here are three charities whose causes align with the themes in this article.
The Childhood Trust. The Childhood Trust is London's child poverty charity, dedicated to alleviating the impact of poverty on children in the capital. Support them here.
Oxfam. Oxfam is a partner to communities around the world tackling poverty because when people come together, powerful change can happen. Learn more here.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation works to speed up and support the transition to a future free from poverty, in which people and planet can flourish. Find out more.
