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Charities Must Help People Help Themselves

Charity is not the solution for helping people out of poverty, according to a leading global advocate for sanitation.

Jack Sim, widely known as “Mr Toilet”, is the founder of the World Toilet Organization and the Base of the Pyramid Hub (BoP Hub), which was established with a mission to design business to end poverty.

He has been in Australia speaking at the FIA conference where he told audiences charity must change to survive in the future and he offered a vision of how to create impact without going through the traditional route of fundraising.

Sim told Pro Bono News the greatest lesson he learnt while trying to create a global movement for sanitation was that “money is a loss making business”.

Applying his philosophy in the context of fundraising, Sim said it was possible for charities to create impact without going through the traditional route of fundraising.

He said charities needed to get back to their mission.

“First of all you have to remember what you are trying to achieve. You are not trying to achieve money, you want to achieve the end result; which is people are not sick, kids get educated, everybody has got opportunity and a better world, where nobody is poor and it is fair and equitable. That’s the kind of thing you want,” he said.

“So you can get that through any channel.

“Charities are very often using emotional blackmail. For example they show a picture of a very sad looking child … and then the message is ‘give me the money or the child dies’. This is language used by kidnappers. Why is it language used by fundraisers?,” he said.

“Something is not right, when we are thinking this way. This child can be a leader of tomorrow. This child deserves the dignity.

To view the full Pro Bono article click here.

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