Give A LIttle: How Our Small Donations Can Transform Our World

Give A Little: How Our Small Donations Can Transform Our World
By Wendy Smith


Everyone at some time has given money to a specific charity of his/her choice or a cause that they are passionate about. Some people even give monthly donations to organizations that help provide food and medicine to a child or family in a different country. But where does the money really go and who is profiting from your donation? Are the people that you are trying to help really getting the money for food, medicine and clothing or are the administrators of this organization getting most of it and those in need not very much? In her book Give A Little, author Wendy Smith provides the reader with the tools necessary to answer not only these questions but which charities, which organizations and which areas your donations will help the most and how to choose the ones that are the most reputable.


The book addresses four major issues related to poverty today: hunger, health, education, and access to tools, technology and infrastructure. The purpose of the book is to help the reader learn the facts that will empower you to make wise and intelligent philanthropic decisions.

She begins by describing the four big secrets of giving which are: Americans are extraordinary givers, affordable donations do make a difference, giving changes You as well as the world and the millennium project that I will now explain. This project has eight goals that the author states are achievable. These goals are targeted to help eliminate poverty and improving prospects for those living in the poorest nations.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child morality
Goal 5: improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat AIDS/HIV, malaria, and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.

Who and where these goals will target and how they will benefit everyone you will have to read for yourself.

In order to ensure that your donations go far the author then goes on to explain how the ripple effect stretches your donation and how that works. You affordable donations will create as she states, ripples of positive change.

1, Positive changes in the lives of those receiving the donation
2. Long term, demonstrated, positive outcomes that are measurable
3. Generate high returns
4. Builds self-sufficiency
Just how this works in detail you need to read pages 28-30 to learn about the ripple effect for yourself.

The main thrust of the book is to help the reader learn which charities or organizations might be considered for donations and how to choose the right one.

Let’s start with those that deal with Hunger, then Health, Education and finally Technology. Eliminating poverty and hunger are the author’s main focus. How do we do that? By contributing to the right organizations that will help people to get food and stay healthy. Programs like KickStart that provides needed technology to help farmers and Kids Café that provides a program that helps youths develop and maintain positive lifestyles. Students are able to participate in quality out of school experiences, which provide opportunities to improve their academic, life skills and more. Read Chapter 8 and learn more about this program and how you can become part of it. That is only one program described in that chapter there are many more.

Health Programs that are needed to provide care for children with many illnesses need our donations too. Programs in Baltimore like the Breathmobile In Baltimore helps children that have asthma and allergies get the proper medical evaluations and medicines needed. Operated and run by the University of Maryland’s Hospital for Children, this program is in 17 schools in Maryland. School nurses, parents, caregivers or primary care providers refer children to the Breathmobile who show shows of asthma. The services provided are numerous and lifesaving. Chicago developed their own program called Mobile C.A.R.E. This group shares information with a child’s primary care doctor and when appropriate shifts the child’s care back to their own doctors. What this organization does and Breathmobile you can learn more about by reading Chapter 10 in depth.

Most people in the world can identify with the need to eradicate tuberculosis and malaria in our country and those around the world. Chapter 11 describes how a program called The Global Fund is fighting to do just that. The author relates stories about real people in each chapter, including this one to allow the reader to understand and go on the same journey as she did to help provide the necessary care for some many people that would ordinarily be without it and left to die. Within that Chapter you will also learn how many women came together to help empower women and teach them how to provide the care needed for their families and others. The author also alerts the reader as to how you can donate to the wonderful organizations in this chapter and where your donations will, how little you really have to give and how all of us can Change the World.

Part four of this book is Education. Like filling an empty bowl with food, filling a mind with knowledge is equally valuable and can create jobs, hope and a life for those who want to learn. A woman who tells her story describes developing Literacy Programs for girls in a program called Save the Children and how she learned to care for her children, study and have a better life. Educating women reduces child mortality. Mothers can channel more of their income to expenses for their children in order to help their husbands. When you educate a woman you empower them to understand what is needed in order to help their families and as the author relates so many times, get medical care and improve sanitation practices. Programs such as Developments in Literacy are dedicated to providing quality education to disadvantaged children as the author describes in detail in Chapter 14. On pages 164- 166 Wendy Smith intertwines all of the information and tells how your donation of ten dollars will provide sixty children with Saturday programs. She tells how other types of donations will provide many other educational programs, health care needs, food and salaries for teachers that are so sorely needed in many underprivileged countries.

Part Five describes how technology, tools and infrastructure play a vital role in helping people. In this section the author related about a day in 2001 when a man named Ken Franz was browsing a National Geographic Magazine. He saw a picture of a man who was trying to get to the other side of a bridge and was hanging from a rope. This picture made a great impact on him and many other people. Getting to the other side of the bridge is often a matter of life and death and is something that many of us take for granted. In order to create a way for people to be able to get medical care, food and the basic necessities of life they need bridges to help them get there. Ken and his brother teamed with Bridges to Prosperity in order to help achieve this goal and create programs to teach the people of these communities to how to build the cable-suspended footbridges needed for them to get from one place to another.

In this book Wendy Smith creates a vehicle for everyone to understand how imperative it is to pay to attention to what is going on around us, here in America and throughout the world. Explaining and showing the reader how little donations add up and create big donations when added together. Programs like Feeding America, where a fifty-dollar donation means 800 meals for a child in need. At World Bicycle Relief a donation of 34 dollars a year will help.

Included her are her own heart wrenching stories of the many people that she was able to help and those that did not get it in time. Programs to provide clean water, Bikes to Fight HIV/AIDS and more are described in detail in Chapter 19-20.

In the last section she gets down to the main point of the point of the book where she tells the reader the many organizations where they can help make a difference and Change the World and how. There are so many organizations that we never knew about that are described in this last part of this book that I you need to read about them, hear the voices of the people that have related their stories and are told in this section and throughout the book and you decide which one or ones you want to support and help feed the hunger, education the children, woman and men, create the technology for jobs, transportation and more and make sure provide the needed health care for those here in America and throughout the world.

I will list just a view and you need to find out and read about the rest:

Actionaid
World Vision
KIVA
DonorSchoose.Org
GlobalGiving

Websites that would be helpful too:
www.craftworkstore.com
www.mercadoglobal.org
www.globalexchangestore.org
www.tenthousandvillages.org
Finally in Chapter 24 you can read and learn about many other organizations that fight world hunger, aides, provide skills in gardening, freedom from hunger and more.

Imagine a world where no one went to bed hungry or sick. Imagine a world where every child learned to read, write and got an education. Imagine a world without Aids/HIV and other horrific illnesses. Imagine a world where everyone had a doctor and could get the medical care they needed.

Don’t imagine: Change The World: Give A Little and Make Big Difference.

Fran Lewis: Review
Author of Memories are Precious and the Bertha Series of Books.