It's great that someone is trying to help the elderly. The challenge with charity is that it's charity. If meals on wheels blinked out of existence tomorrow, no one has the right to expect a meal the day after. It would just suck more for a bunch of people. I think we need commitment to new human rights: among other things, everyone should have enough food. That's the standard. If they don't have enough food, we and that person should expect that it's addressed.

[–] dingus@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Agreed, of course. Was just pointing out that such a thing did exist. Charities are not the most effective way to handle such issues, absolutely.

Charities absolutely rely on things like public relations and advertising campaigns to raise awareness that they exist and/or need funding. It leaves everyone at the mercy of which charity is "most popular" and if yours isn't very popular, you could see it disappear. It also means a significant portion of the budget is spent on things that don't actually address the real problem, which is hunger.

[–] LesserAbe@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah! Like I'm glad that Charity Navigator exists because we need it in the world we live in, but people shouldn't have to do a lot of research to determine if their donation is mostly going to administrative costs.