hardthaven!

So, before I launch into the awesomeness of HardtHaven, I should preface this entry by acknowledging that, according to GiveWell, if you're interested in bang for your philanthrophic buck, housing and educating AIDS orphans is not the way to go. With the money invested in a single sponsored child at HardtHaven ($25 for medical sponsorship plus $25 for nutrition sponsorship plus $25 for education sponsorship plus $30 for basic needs sponsorship), you could be buying 26 malaria nets a month, and all you need in order to keep kids from dying of malaria is a malaria net.

(To clarify: I'm not being the least bit ironic, there: malaria nets are $4 apiece and they will keep little kids from contracting and dying of malaria. If you want to make the malaria nets and saved lives happen, go to Against Malaria's website -- Against Malaria is one of just three charities that got GiveWell's unqualified approval last year.)

If you're a sucker like me, who can't quite dismiss the complicated work and often ambiguous outcomes of, say, raising the kids of parents who died of AIDS, HardtHaven is a little school for nineteen kids in Kpando, Ghana.

These kids lost their parents to AIDS; about a third of them are HIV positive. They are, as you will see if you click the link above, beautiful and amazing.

I am inept at the kind of calculations required to determine if they are, or are not, "worth" the potential lives saved if you were to spend your money on malaria nets instead of sponsoring them. Moreover, my effing ladyfriend responded to my New Year's resolutions with the suggestion that I resolve to be kinder and gentler to myself, and the above is precisely the kind of quandary I intend to avoid in an effort to so.

So I subscribed to Hardthaven's home expense fund, which pays for rent, upkeep, and staffing at the orphanage. There's no personalized thank you letter, like you get if you sponsor an individual child's expenses, but it appeared to be the area with the greatest need; my subscription should bring them to 17 of the 100 subscribers they are aiming for. It's also a smaller financial commitment, leaving me with more money to spend on mosquito nets (one can hope) or, you know, bills. But not sushi, because I'm ringing in the New Year with a sushi fast (to facilitate the net-buying, etc).

We'll see how long that lasts. Hopefully long enough for me to find a non-monetary way of helping the global poor. If you have thoughts on that, please send them my way. For both philosophical and financial reasons, I'm a little unnerved by the kid-in-a-candy-storeness with which I keep perusing Global Giving.