Train a nurse

rochja · 13 December 2016 at 5:33PM

The charity site 'Good gifts' is asking just £525 to put an African through a three year nurse training programme. However, it offers no contact with the recipient of the award meaning there is no feedback whatsoever. Indeed you cannot even be sure you are paying for the training of an extra nurse or one that would have funded it by other means. I find that unacceptable. Is there a way of making a more direct investment in such training with similar cost to me that would allow me to get to know the recipient and what he or more probably she goes on to achieve?

paddyrg · 14 December 2016 at 1:38PM

Look at people like Oxfam or MSF who will divert your cash where it will have fullest impact. That's what these 'send a goat' schemes do - the equivalent money is pooled, goats may be given as a part of that spend if it's most appropriate (but for instance if a village doesn't have access to water, a goat would just die). I'd imagine it's very similar with specific training - funds are collected which pay a trainer to come and stay in an area where several interested people will train at the same time in different skills - it's hard to attribute one person's cash against another person's benefit in a direct 1:1 correlation.

Maybe something like ActionAid child sponsorship would be more suitable, then you have a direct connection.

Savvy_Sue · 15 December 2016 at 11:43PM

Agree with paddy, there are charities which offer a direct link but many of the 'gift' schemes do not guarantee that you are getting what you think you're paying for. Possibly with Toilet Twinning you're definitely paying for toilets, but I'd be surprised if the money you send ONLY goes to the toilet you elect to twin with.

And actually that doesn't bother me. I'd rather allow staff on the ground in Africa to work out where that training money is best spent, rather than spending time enabling personal relationships between students there and donors in the UK. That might be very special, but it's also going to be time consuming, and could lead to problems.

I think the information on the toilet twinning website is a good compromise, maybe. There are stories from the people who've benefitted from better toilets, stories about what it was like before they had safe toilets and the improvement it's brought now.

Train a nurse

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