I’m in general opposed to individual volunteering.

Non-profit foundations can be a good thing but they tend to be bandaids instead of solutions.

Most people’s time is better spent generating money through the thing they are good at. Part of that money should be spend on systemic solutions. There are some non-profits that do work on these system solutions.

The problems with individual volunteering are:

1. Most of the people doing it are bad at the jobs. It would be better to hire people full-time to do the work, if its necessary.

2. It is directed by individual empathy which is a bad way of allocating resources in our global system. E.g: people care more about 1 boy drowning in the Mediterranean than millions displaced.

3. The people doing it often don’t know what is best for the people they are trying to “help.” E.g. efforts to grow foreign crops in Africa that fail miserably. Another example: food handouts in Africa often benefit the local “mafia”, who steal and accumulate the food, instead of benefiting the hungry.

The one exception to this is if you get pleasure from volunteering. Admit that you’re doing it for yourself and not the people you are “helping”. But, if thats what you need, maybe you should quit your job and find one that is more fulfilling.

^Day 21/90 226 Words