Bevans Branham’s Newest Blog Post:
You can’t help people you don’t listen to. You can’t teach Bobby calculus if you ignore his lack of algebra. You can’t teach Joe to appreciate literature if you ignore his inability to read. The more you try to help people without asking what they need, the more of a self-absorbed pinhead you become.
When philanthropists do charity, they have to be humble in the way they help others. Real charity requires collaboration and communication with locals. It requires understanding that just because a certain program worked in region A, it doesn’t necessarily mean it will work in region B. It requires acceptance that somethings are just beyond the will and comprehension of any one individual except when that individual can listen to others. For a charity to be effective, it will require forethought.
Don’t build roads if people have nowhere to go. Don’t give books if people don’t know how to read. Don’t donate free clothes if it will leave half the locals unemployed. Analyze and contextualize what people need; then you can help them.
With all the money given to the world’s poor, you’d think world hunger would’ve been eradicated by now. But this money is simple charity; it’s giving money without thinking where that money goes. These donors have a lack of understanding and involvement with the people they are trying to help. They ignore the channeling issues, the political barriers, the corruption and the unintended consequences that make these donations ineffective. If you want to help the world, you have to do your research, you have to be responsible in the way you help and you have to make sure you’re actually making a difference.
Anything we do has unintended consequences, especially if it affects a large number of people. If you want to be important enough to leave a mark somewhere, it will have to be somewhere local, where you have the time and energy to listen to people, to learn their histories and to leave something that would have permanent benefit. But if you want to save half of Africa, maybe you should stop being a superhero and work with others to achieve your good intentions. Together, those others know a lot more than any one individual is capable of knowing.
via Bevans Branham http://bevansbranham.org/are-philanthropists-getting-a-bit-too-ambitious/
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California passed a bill stating that one third of their total energy supply must be in the form of renewable energy by the year 2020. This bill has pushed major venture capitalists such as Peter Thiel and Vinod Khosla as well as major corporations like General Electric CO and Microsoft Corp to fund various different projects. Thiel and Khosla have invested money into compressed air as a means of energy storage. The idea works in tandem with windmills, energy is generated by the mills which are then funneled beneath the earth as compressed air. The compressed air is stored in a geologic storage structure, and when the air is needed it is funneled back to the surface and heated to produce electricity.
