You Can Make a Difference

Having been a great fan of Half the Sky, I was very excited when I found out that Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn were coming out with another book, this time focused on how more effective charities can make a real difference around the world. My high expectations were certainly not disappointed, and the authors penned a wide-ranging book that talks about topics from how to better target your charitable giving, how charities can be more effective, and how a multitude of different approaches can effectively help solve many of the seemingly intractable problems around the world.

Sometimes we seem to be confronted with problems that are so massive that we believe solutions to be impossible. How can we tackle disease, rampant poverty and illiteracy, sex trafficking, and other problems that affect millions around the world? The very scale of the problems seems to make solutions elusive. But this would be a mistaken perspective. These problems are not only solvable, but they are being solved by active, innovative charities across the world. The way we view charity, and the way we donate are delaying solutions to the problems we face, Kristof and WuDunn argue. The solution is in learning to give more intelligently, of supporting evidence-based charitable work, and of changing the way we view nonprofits--and how they view themselves. 

We expect that there will be a silver bullet to solve the complex problems we face, but the real solutions are as complex as the problems they attempt to solve. They won't be solved overnight, either. Progress is incremental, but we would be wrong to despair and give up because of the pace of change. The Atlantic Slave Trade wasn't ended overnight, and women didn't win the right to vote in a matter of months either. Global poverty, illiteracy, and sex trafficking won't be ended after a few weeks of hard work either. 

While this is the perfect book for anyone interested in giving more effectively, I would also recommend this to anyone who, like myself, works in a non-profit. Several chapters present valuable information for helping make a charitable organization more effective, including how to frame your narrative to increase support for your organization, and this applies just as much to libraries as it does to an international charity. 

This book is ultimately uplifting because of the continual reminders that individual people can and do make a difference in non-profit work every day. Very few of us may go out and change the whole world, but if we all chip in a bit, our combined efforts can add up to large-scale changes that will improve the world we live in. And that's something worth working for.