The Ted Talk revolved around the idea of philanthropy and its effectiveness with the use of technology in the process. The speaker talked about the necessity of providing charity to the essentially poor so that the money is reached free of corruption. The talk suggests the use of technology, mainly about the use of mobile phones in providing money to the families living in the poorest of conditions, a phenomenon named unconditional cash transfer. This charity is called Give Directly. She explains this by defining how people in different countries such as Uruguay, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Vietnam benefit from the money that is given to them directly. This is because when people are given the money, individual families are able to help themselves and improve their lives more efficiently as compared to those who cannot scrape enough for themselves. She also provides images of people who live in very poor conditions, and they are provided funds through the mobile transfer of cash. I have learned that perhaps giving charity to individuals who are poor and providing them the cash could be more helpful than giving charity to charity organizations. I would like to ask the speaker if it would be better to help these people settle in some kind of business rather than just give them the money. This is because as she said, the poor cannot make good choices, hence, if the people choose to give them money, then why not help these people in a way that will help them in the long run.
She is able to convince the readers by providing visuals of the people she targets, by showing their homes and huts and through statistical data which shows how people mismanage their money. She builds the trust in the audience by relaying many facts that the poor not only lack the finance, but they are also unable to make good decisions about their lives. Also, as everyone is indulged in technology, it is not hard for them to believe that technology will help. She has provided information on how pregnant women in Uruguay have been able to improve their health conditions by money and how Sri Lankan men were able to invest in business, whereas people also satisfied spiritual needs through buying coffins with money, no matter how statistical data on how the benefitted families are doing after they received the money and whether they did anything lucrative with it.
Bibliography
Sun, Joy. “Should you donate differently?” Ted. July 2014.
