The biggest charity in the world, Doctors Without Borders, carries out 6 million consultations and 200,000 surgical interventions annually. The initiative grew to such a massive scale that the first respondent can arrive at a site within minutes. During the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example, the DWB team was able to treat the first victim within five minutes.
If you want to support smaller projects which are committed to equally notable causes, here is a selection of 10 projects.
1. Project HOPE
Project HOPE is a health and humanitarian organization. It was founded in the United States in 1958; at the time, it was the world’s first peacetime hospital ship.
HOPE focuses on five main areas:
- Health crises and disasters
- Infectious diseases
- Chronic diseases
- Maternal, neonatal, and child health
- Health policy
The main goal of the project is to support community health care workers so that they can operate more efficiently on their own.
2. Grassroots Business Fund
The Grassroots Business Fund is based in the USA, with key field offices operating in Kenya, Peru, and India.
The GBF aims to economically empower high-impact small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It does so by investing capital and providing technical assistance services to businesses that need them.
So far, the project has created 11,130 jobs and supported 13.9 million family members.
3. Miracle Foundation
Miracle Foundation supports orphaned children in India and the United States. Its mission is inspired and guises by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with three key areas of focus:
- Ensuring the rights of orphaned children are followed
- Changing the way foster families and case managers communicate
- Reducing the need for orphanages
The foundation has improved 20,743 children’s lives and trained 3,282 social workers.
4. GoodWeave International
GoodWeave International, formerly known as Rugmark, is a network of non-profit organizations founded by children’s rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi in 1994. The goal of GoodWeave is to eradicate child, forced, and bonded labor in supply chains.
At first, the project had a narrow focus on the home textile sector and grew from there. Now, it offers a labeling system that guarantees that no child labor was used in the making of various products.
5. CARE
CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) is a major humanitarian agency fighting global poverty. It is operating in 104 countries, supporting over 1,300 local projects, and reaching over 92 million people directly and 43 million people indirectly.
The project aims to address a broad range of topics, including:
- Food security
- Water and sanitation
- Emergency response
- Climate change
- Economic development
- Agriculture
- Education
- Health at the local, national, and international levels
6. Clean Air Asia
Clean Air Asia was established in 2001 and, in 2008, became a United Nations-recognized partnership of more than 250 organizations. The work focuses on reducing air pollution and its detrimental health impacts by:
- Providing policy guidance
- Strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes, and resources of local communities
- Making a compelling case for action among stakeholders
The current geographical scope of operations includes South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Clean Air is headquartered in the Philippines, with offices in China and India.
7. Wildlife Trusts
The Wildlife Trusts is made up of 46 individual charitable trusts, which cover around 98,500 hectares and look after more than 2,300 nature reserves. While the network itself was formed 110 years ago in the UK, the local organizations within it have different origins, histories, and sizes.
The main purpose that all these organizations serve is to bring wildlife back, help people take meaningful action to protect the environment, and to create an inclusive society.
8. Comic Relief
Comic Relief was founded by the comedians Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry in 1985. The concept is to make the public laugh in an annual telethon while raising money to help people around the world.
The key four issue areas are:
- Creating a safe place to be
- Children survive & thrive
- Safety and equality of women
- Better mental health
In just the last two years, Comic Relief has helped 11.7 million people.
9. EMMS International
The EMMS (Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society) has been providing medical aid around the world since 1841. The project has field offices in the UK, Malawi, India, Israel, and Nepal and stands for “health for today, hope for tomorrow.”
The EMMS tackles health inequalities through:
- Strengthening local healthcare
- Responding to healthcare emergencies
- Reducing the impact of disease
- Developing palliative care for families
10. BAPS Charities
BAPS’ initial charitable activities focused on fighting addiction and helping the poor. Now, the focus is broader, and the programs address health, education, the environment, and natural disaster recovery.
In partnership with UNICEF and the International Red Cross, BAPS serves communities throughout the year and at centers across the world.