Helping people help themselves
Some of my friends are avid donators to Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play charity. I know because they tweet their “achievements.” However I’ve never really liked Child’s Play. Because while being a child in a hospital sucks, giving them video games and lauding that effort as worthwhile rings hollow.
The gamer community is powerful. Enough to make waves and not always beneficently. I long since disassociated myself from them. Thankfully the internet isn’t wholly owned by them, another group comes to mind that I’m far happier to be with. As a nerd who sometimes fights world suck, I happily threw money at a decent cause.
Providing communities access to clean nearby water actually matters. It matters to the community getting water, it impacts the communities around them. First world problems pale to the life threatening conditions we are capable of altering through the smallest efforts from our privileged world.