HELIOLITH

This image is from the BBC Report today from UNICEF’s Warning that Children are falling victim to the immense humanitarian tragedy that Iraq has become, and that need is outstripping our ability to bring aid.

Maybe the War Resisters have a good notion. Witholding money from the military involved in a criminal war shows honor. I am not so bold as to flirt with an agency that routinely takes away everything from people who defy them. I joined Peace Action West last week, and I remembered instantly what giving a little bit of your livelihood toward change feels like.

So my compulsion thought is to offset the approximate 5% of my income that goes directly to war (about half of my federal income taxes, which are about half of my overall taxes? I’ll fine-tune this guesstimate later). What if I were to put just as much money where I feel the government should be putting it? Humanitarian aid. Campaigning against war, for a start. Then for nourishment, health, the survival, health, and well-being of children, clean water, safety, justice, equality… the list could be long, but it can also be prioritized.

I’ve been mapping out a “best of” list on Charity Navigator, which seems like an excellent reference.

I’ve listed a few of those that Charity Navigator doesn’t index in a delicious tagged list, and have divided those within C.N. into a ‘Best’ list, and a ‘General’ List. It’s very rough at this point, but the objective referencing that C.N. seems to provide is really interesting. You can see how efficient they show each organization to be in various areas, as well as what their CEO makes. The latter has no effect on their star-rating system, but they explain that they show those numbers for greater transparency.

Unicef is very high on my list of organizations that I’d like to begin giving to, as they have a 4-star efficiency rating, they work with children, they have a very high rate of effectiveness, and they were one of the organizations listed in Jay-Z’s Water Campaign that Saheli wrote about that may have catalyzed my current introspective financial-activism project.

But here’s where CEO Salaries come in.

Charles J. Lyons, the UNICEF President makes $427,788, which granted, is only 0.09% of their budget, yet it’s still nearly half of a million dollars per year. My wondering whether this is appropriate may be culturally conditioned, but maybe it’s not.

Perhaps their goal isn’t the eradication of poverty, nor the sharing of wealth, but simply to help as much as possible from within a capitalist-driven worldview. Clearly, not everyone in the world can make $427,788 dollar salaries, right? There isn’t that much to go around. I’m all for an abundance model, but there are finite resources on the planet, and it might be wrong for someone who manages so much giving to be so rich.

Also, you can’t just throw medics at any situation and hope that by caring for the wounded and war-torn that you will heal a war, obviously. So if I give to aid, it must be coupled with giving to those who are fighting the main causes of the suffering, in the case of Iraq, the U.S. occupation. Maybe the Charles J. Lyons gives 90% of his income to the anti-war movement, that would be nice.

Should there be a cap on UNICEF’s top guy’s salary? Can a group like UNICEF that is working within the system have a powerful effect? No doubt! Are they less likely to fundamentally change things at the root level? Perhaps, but perhaps that’s not their goal at all… should it be? How can we say if they are saving so many lives?

Who do you give to?