The Copenhagen Consensus Centre have once again done us a big favour by bringing together a group of economists (including several Nobel prize winners) to agree the most effective measures to solve the world's problems. They have identified thirty different measures that - on a cost/benefit basis - can make the biggest, quickest contribution to alleviating suffering and poverty throughout the world - see image.Simple things, like vitamin A and zinc supplements in children's diets, can make huge differences at relatively low costs. I like their approach: reason-based, compassionate economics. The folks in Irish Aid please take note.
And another thing: check out this brilliant initiative by Irish mobile application specialists Púca - just text the word AID to 57500 and your account will be debited €2.50 which will go (without tax or mobile network charges) directly to a group of Irish charities dealing with the crisis in Burma/Myanmar. Better still, when you make a donation you get a text message inviting you to invite a friend or friends to do the same with all the details in the message for you to forward. Exactly the kind of viral/web 2.0/participative aid involvement that I like and which will be a bigger part of the future for charities.
Get texting ...
funny how all these guys ranked climate change so low. the list really shows where we should be putting our efforts and not wasting them on spurious super-long range predictions that change every week
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