Are 80 million potential voluntourists, slacktivists & DIY humanitarians the future of charity?
Forgive the catchy headline, but this is still a development blog ;)! To answer my question straight away: No, of course not. But wait, there’s more… In a recent NPR feature How Millennials Are Reshaping Charity And Online Giving Elise Hu shared the story of Charity Water founder Scott Harrison: Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink. Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary But this is not a critical post about Charity Water and development entrepreneurs (there was a nuanced debate on the organization over at Humanosphere last year). The real dynamit