EXTREME POVERTY REPORT

Giving plays a crucial role in eliminating poverty. Poverty is a problem that has proven solutions.

CONTENTS

Letter from the Executive Director

Extreme Poverty

Myths About Giving

Why Give to Charity?

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CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

The Life You Can Save is pleased to present the Extreme Poverty Report. This summary compiles information that is available in many different places, but hopefully puts it all together in a concise, graphic format that makes it easier to understand and decide to take part in the fight against the devastating effects of extreme poverty.

We hope that the information enclosed, along with our website, encourages more and more people to enhance the impact of their charitable donations by giving effectively and even increasing the amount they are currently allocating for charity.

We understand that there are many great NGOs and places people want to give their money to. Like most people, we are pulled in many different directions. Associational giving, giving that is a result of family, kinship, and a sense of community, is a very strong motivator. At The Life You Can Save, we hope you will consider optimal giving. This type of giving considers first and foremost how to relieve the most suffering per dollar, despite the fact that the recipient may live on a different continent, speak another language, or be of a different race or ethnic group. Youll be surprised when you see just how impactful effective philanthropy can be.

Thanks for reading through this Extreme Poverty Report and visiting The Life You Can Saves website. In addition to donating to our recommended charities, we hope you will consider taking The Life You Can Saves pledge to fight global poverty, joining the over 17,000 people who have already done so.

Charlie Bresler, Ph.D.Executive Director, The Life You Can Save

Letter from the Executive Director

EXTREME POVERTY

If you had the chance to save the life of a child, would you do it? Most of us would do so without giving it a second thought. If saving a drowning child meant simply wading into a shallow pond to pull the child out, we would not hesitate to take this action. The fact that we would get wet or ruin a good suit would not outweigh the act of saving a childs life.

Do you realize each of us has the opportunity to save the life of a human being right now? In fact, we are presented with thousands of such opportunities every single day. UNICEF estimates that over 18,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes associated with extreme poverty. That breaks down to over 750 children per hour, or 12 children per minute.

These causes of death include lack of access to clean drinking water, insufficient nutrition, inadequate health care services, malaria, dysentery, worms, and neonatal infection. These diseases and health problems are not commonly found in the developed world because we have access to resources that prevent or cure them.

Extreme poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs such as food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, and education. Extreme poverty depends not only on income, but also on access to services.

Yet, despite the fact that developed nations have an abundance of resources that sustain life, over a billion people continue to live and die in poverty, struggling daily with its consequences.

2 Extreme Poverty

CHAPTER 1

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Today of 7 billion people on Earth:

What causes extreme poverty?

3 Extreme Poverty

2.4 billion people live on less than $2 (USD) a day1.2 billion people live on less than $1.25 per dayMore than 1 billion people lack access to clean waterClose to 2 billion people lack access to sanitation facilities842 million people go to bed hungry 116 million children are not enrolled in any formal educationNearly 800 million adults cannot read or write

Q: Extreme poverty has multiple causes, including harsh climate, lack of fertile land, war and political strife, government corruption, disease, and famine. Many of these causes are in turn exacerbated by poverty and contribute to a cycle of suffering that prevents the worlds neediest people from accessing the most basic health services, resources and information that they need to survive.

A:

Here in the developed world, were all in the position to make a difference in the life of someone desperately in need. Its up to you to decide how much you are willing to contribute to alleviate the suffering of others.

You can save a life.

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http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

Why Give to Charity?

Poverty can be solved. Effective interventions can break the cycle of poverty for the worlds neediest people. According to progress reports on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, fewer people today are living in extreme poverty than just a few decades ago:

The percentage of people living on under $1.25 a day fell by half during the 20 years between 1990 and 2010. In developing regions, the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day fell from 47 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2010

700 million fewer people lived in extreme poverty in 2010 than in1990 despite the fact that the Earths overall population increased by 1.6 billion during the same period

The UN Millennium target goal of halving the number of people who suffer from hunger is projected to be met by 2015

Source:http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/12/11/3036671/2013-certainly-year-human-history/

4 Why Give to Charity?

CHAPTER 2

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Why Give to Charity? 5

We have the financial resources to combat poverty.

While these totals may seem like significant amounts of money, these are small amounts relative to what the developed world spends on luxuries each year.

www.gatesnotes.com/Development/G20-Report-Innovation-with-Impact

While 1.2 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, those of us living in the developed world have significant collective resources at our disposal. Focusing solely on the U.S., it would take just $3 per American citizen to come up with a billion dollars of aid money. How much money per year would it take to meet the most basic health and nutritional requirements of the worlds neediest people?

Anti-M

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Net $

3

Starbu

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$3.66

Catar

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2 Movi

e Tick

ets

in NYC

$30 Fis

tula

Surge

ry $45

0

iPad A

ir $49

9$0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

$500

HOW MUCH DO WE NEED TO FIGHT POVERTY?

Double tropical agriculture research &

development spending

Vaccines for all infants in poor countries

Treat all non-resistant cases of Tuberculosis

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

$ 3B

$ 4B

$ 5B

6 Why Give to Charity?

Even small donations have an impact. While poverty is indeed extreme and widespread, it is easy to forget just how many people there are in the developed world, and how powerful our pocket change can become when pooled together.You know the old adage, For the price of a cup of coffee a day... Its true!Small donations have the potential to drastically improve an individuals quality of life.

$3$25

$450

can buy one insecticide-treated bed net, which lasts about 4 years and protects against malaria borne by mosquitos.

can buy one cataract surgery, which restores eyesight to those in the developing world. Seva Foundation estimates that currently 18 million people live with preventable blindness due to cataracts.

can pay for a fistula surgery, which repairs obstetric injuries due to complications sustained during child-birth. Thats cheaper than the cost of a single nights stay in a Western hospital.

Giving makes us happier people. Research has shown: spending money on ourselves does not significantly increase our sense of happiness or well-being. A Harvard Business School study suggests that giving to others is directly correlated with an increased sense of happiness. The Harvard researchers write that giving has a strong tendency to make people happy, and that happy people in turn tend to give more: Happier people give more and giving makes people happier, such that happiness and giving may operate in a positive feedback loop.

Other studies have shown that people experience pleasure when they see money go to charityeven if this money isnt their own. People experience the most pleasure, however, when they give directly to charity themselves.

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Giving works. The fact that extreme poverty still exists causes many people to claim that development aid isnt working. In fact, effective aid efforts have been repeatedly proven to reduce death rates and suffering in developing countries. Here are only a few examples:

Non-governmental organizations are increasingly relying on independent evaluations to bolster their accountability and to adjust their operations. Organizations like The Life You Can Save, Giving What We Can, and GiveWell curate annually-revised lists of recommended charities with demonstrated efficiency and effectiveness.

Between 1990 and 2010, global extreme poverty rates were halved

Globally, the number of deaths of children under 5 years of age fell from 12.6 million in 1990 to 6.6 million in 2012

Because of aid and debt relief, Uganda and Tanzania have been able to abolish school fees and achieve universal primary education

Over 4 million people suffering from HIV/AIDS now have access to life-saving antiretroviral treatment, a more than ten-fold increase in the past 9 years

7 Why Give to Charity?

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MYTHS ABOUT GIVING

MYTH #1 Poverty isnt the problem; its the symptom.

Giving to charity is a band-aid solution rather than a long-term solution. Instead, we should work to fix structural issues that lead to poverty.

Extreme poverty is a complicated issue, caused by a nexus of related problems: political instability, poor infrastructure, lack of education, lack of access to healthcare, famine, and maldistribution of income and wealth, to name a few. While aid alone hasnt eliminated global poverty, it has done a lot in the developing world to drastically decrease the number of people living in extreme poverty and to improve the basic standard of living for many people suffering from preventable illnesses and diseases.

Better health, in turn, enables people living in poverty to contribute more significantly to their own success: they can go to work, they can go to school, they can contribute to their household income, and they dont take someone elses time and capacity to work by requiring care.

Of course, giving to charity isnt the only thing we can do. We can also work toward solutions on a political level. Complex issues like poverty need to be addressed on many levels and in various ways. You can help address poverty by giving to independently evaluated, proven effective charities to alleviate the confluence of the factors which perpetuate the cycle of poverty.

Between 1930 and 2010, worldwide deaths from mos-quito-born malaria decreased from 3.8 million to 0.7 milliona reduction of 80 percent.

Since 1980, smallpox has been eradicated due to a World Health Initiative launched in 1959. Prior to its eradication, smallpox killed 50% of those who fell ill to the disease.

Since its inception in 1978, Seva Foundation has helped fund cataract surgeries to restore eyesight to 3.5 million people living in the developed world.

8 Myths About Giving

CHAPTER 3

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9 Myths About Giving

When asked whether the United States allocates more, less, or about the same percentage to foreign aid as other developed nations, only 1 out of 20 Americans guessed correctly. Most Americans are surprised to discover that the United States is near the bottom of the list of developed countries in terms of the percentage of national income that is allocated to foreign aid. In 2012, the United States ranked behind Portugal and Iceland. In that year, the United States gave only 19 cents of every $100 of earningsa total of .19% to foreign aid.Americans also dramatically overestimate the portion of government spending thats dedicated to foreign aid. On average, Americans believe almost a third of their governments expenditures go toward foreign aid, when in reality only 0.7% of the annual budget is allocated to International Development and Humanitarian Assistance.

Governments arent giving what society expects them to give. Even with tax payers consent, goverments wont give enough aid to end extreme poverty.

MYTH #2 Poverty relief is the responsibility of governments.

A portion of our tax money already goes to foreign aid. We shouldnt have to give more as individuals in addition to what we already pay in taxes.

GOVERNMENT AID IN PERCENTAGE OF GROSS NATIONAL INCOME (2012)

UN Ta

rget .0

7

Luxem

bourg

1.00

Swed

en .99

Norwa

y .93

Denm

ark .8

4

Nethe

rlands

.71

United

King

dom

.56

Finlan

d .53

Ireland

.48

Belgiu

m .47

France

.45

Switze

rland .

45

Germ

any .3

8

Austr

alia .3

6

Austr

ia .28

Canad

a .32

New Z

ealan

d .28

Icelan

d .22

Unite

d Stat

es .19

Portu

gal .2

7

Japan

.17

Spain

.15

North

Korea

.14

Italy .1

3

Greece

.13

0

0.2

0.6

0.4

0.8

1

1

www.oecd.org/dac/stats/aidtopoorcountriesslipsfurtherasgovernmentstightenbudgets.htm

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It is true that giving out food handouts directly to people living in extreme poverty has the potential to disrupt local economies (e.g. by making it difficult for local farmers to competitively price their crops). Except in the case of natural disasters, illness, disease and other emergencies, handouts are not a sustainable way to combat the problems associated with extreme poverty. However, many types of intervention can successfully reinvigorate and strengthen local economies by providing long-term healthcare, agricultural, and educational solutions for people living in communities in developing nations.For example, organizations such as the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) and Deworm the World work directly with governments in sub-Saharan Africa to create and strengthen deworming programs that improve childrens health and education outcomes. Both SCI and Deworm the World seek to secure funds for government-implemented programs. By setting up effective healthcare systems, organizations like these pave the way for pilot programs to evolve into long-term elements of national healthcare systems. This leads to an eventual decreased dependence on foreign aid.In many cases direct handouts have proven to be an effective and empowering solution:

In Kenya, insecticide-treated mosquito nets provide highly effective malaria prevention, yet if the nets are sold at a low price of $1 rather than distributed for free, a full 35% percent of people decide to go without. Households that received a free net are more likely to buy another later on. While poor households are often already too burdened to take the risk of another expendiure to prevent malaria, the demonstrated effectiveness of the free net justifies future expenditures.

10 Myths About Giving

MYTH #3 Giving aid makes developing countries dependent upon foreign resources and funding.

Choosing to give will mean that I will contribute to governments and economies that will never be self-sufficient. Withholding aid now means that developing countries will learn to build stable infrastructures for themselves in the future.

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11 Myths About Giving

The claim that life-saving interventions always lead to unsustainable population growth is verifiably false. Death rates have very little to do with declines in populations. On the contrary, having a lower birth rate is the most important factor that contributes to viable and stable populations.

The single best predictor of a womans fertility is her educational level. Increasing access to education, and access to the basic material needs that help girls in the developing world enroll and stay enrolled in school is the best form of population planning. Greater access to safe contraception gives women more control over their fertility, and lower infant mortality rates encourage families to have fewer children. Increased access to economic and educational opportunities also means that parents do not need to have as many children, since they will not need their children to work to supplement family income.

MYTH #4 Giving leads to overpopulation. Therefore, the problems associated with extreme poverty are only exacerbated by aid.

http://youtu.be/BkSO9pOVpRM

There are almost a million nonprofits that you can choose to give to in the US alone, and the process of selecting which organization to support can feel like a daunting task. Fortunately, several independent organizations conduct extensive research in order to determine which charities will most effectively use your money to help the worlds neediest people.Through his contacts with GiveWell, Giving What We Can, Oxfam, and others, Peter Singer has developed the following list of the most effective charities:

12 Myths About Giving

MYTH #5 Donations dont help the people who need the most aid.

If I give, my money will end up paying for the nonprofits organizational marketing or operational costs. In the worst case, my donation will end up contributing to corruption or bribery in countries that lack stable governments and effective relief distribution programs. I dont have the time to do the research to find out which charities are effective and which are frauds.

Reading

Resources

Community

Still not sure whether to donate? Consult the most recent statistics: Why Donate?

Find the worlds most effective charities: Where to Donate

Keep in touch with our Newsletter and our weekly Blogs

PHOTO CREDITS AND CAPTIONSFront cover Karl FluchNot Alone https://www.flickr.com/photos/karlhans

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Possible 2013Boy waiting at a Possible-supported pharmacy with brother.

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Possible 2013Young girl in Nepal, after receivig medical care through Possible

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Table of Contents Meet The Boss TVCharles Bresler, during an executive interview

Possible 2013A family in Nepal Michelle Siu/World Vision

Possible 2014A local mother with child who received care through Possible

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Possible 2013Local women in Nepal, near Possible clinic

Nicholas Axelrod/UNICEF Cambodia

Possible 2013Girl in Nepal, before and after surgery received through Possiible

Page 8 Karl FluchNot Alone https://www.flickr.com/photos/karlhans

Page 9 Michelle Siu/World Vision

Possible 2014A local mother with child who received care through Possible

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Possible 2014A local mother with child waiting outside of a Possible clinic

SOURCES AND CITATIONSPage 2

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1 Unicef. 10 July 2014. www.unicef.org/mdg/childmortality.html

1Poverty Overview. worldbank.org. The World Bank Group, 2014. 10 July 2014. www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview

2 Access to Safe Water. worldbank.org. The World Bank Group, 2014. 10 July 2014. www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/mod-ules/environm/water/print.html

3 The State of Food Insecurity in the World. FAO Corporate Document Repository. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2012. Web. 10, July 2014. www.fao.org/docrep/

4 Hillman, A. L. and Jenker, E., 2004 Educating Children in Poor Countries. imf.org. International Monetary Fund, 2004. Web.10 July 2014. www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/issues/issues33/

5 The Economic and Social Cost of Illiteracy. Interim Report from the World Literacy Foundation. World Literacy Foundation. Web. 10 July 2014. www.worldliteracyfoundation.org/interim-report.html

1 Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015. United Nations. Web. 10 July 2014. www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml

1 Anik, Aknin, Norton, Dunn, 2009. Feeling Good about Giving. Harvard Business School Working Paper 10-012. Web. 10 July 2014. www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/10-012.pdf

2 Harbaugh, William T. 2007. Neural Responses to Taxation and Vol-untary Giving Reveal Motives for Charitable Donations. Science 316: 1622-1625.

2 Debt and Aid. Oxfam International, 2014. Web. 10 June 2014.www.oxfam.org/campaigns/health-education/debt-and-aid

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3 Getting to Zero: HIV in Eastern & Southern Africa. Unicef, 2013 Web. 10 July 2014. www.unicef.org/esaro/Getting-to-Zero-2013.pdf

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1 Myths About Aid. Giving What We Can 2013. Web. 10 July 2014. www.givingwhatwecan.org/get-involved/myths-about-aid

2 Seva Foundation, 2013. Web. 10 July 2014. http://www.seva.org/site/PageServer?pagename=programs/prevent_blindness

1What Matters in Malaria Prevention in Kenya. Innovations for Pov-erty Action. Web. 10 July 2014. www.poverty-action.org/project/0159

1 Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015. United Nations. Web. 10 July 2014. www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml

1 Lentfer, J. 7 things you may not know about US foreign assistance. Oxfam America,1 April 2014. politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org

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The more we can learn about how to give most effectively,

and act upon that learning, the greater our collective impact

on extreme poverty will be.- Charles Bresler

The Life You Can Save Executive Director

Published by The Life You Can Save10540 NE Morning LaneBainbridge Island, WA 98110, USA

info@thelifeyoucansave.orgwww.thelifeyoucansave.org

The Life You Can Save July 2014

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