May Digweed (Geography with Economics, 2024) is co-founding a new organisation at LSE called One for the World. In this blog, she reflects on what One for the World does and the importance of this work to her personally. 

In March 1977, two Boeing 747s collided at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Spain. The damage was catastrophic: 583 people died, leaving the world shocked by the scale of the tragedy. Imagine, now, twenty 747s crashing into each other every day. This is the daily death toll wrought by extreme poverty.

An average of 14,500 children under 5 died each day in 2018, over half from entirely preventable causes – enough to fill twenty 747s. These statistics struggle to communicate suffering and death of this magnitude and can make the problems behind these deaths seem intractable. This is simply not the case. Most of these children die from easily preventable causes, such as malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria.

In 2018, the Institute for Fiscal Studies placed LSE as the top institution for average earnings in the UK, with many graduates likely to reach the global top 1% of highest-income earners. For perspective, the world’s 3.5 billion poorest adults have assets of less than $10,000, meaning average LSE graduates make more than five times as much per year than most people on earth possess. Being in the global 1% comes with immense opportunity to do good. Research undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that global poverty could be eliminated by 2030 using just 0.1% of the annual income of OECD member countries. Our privilege as LSE students uniquely positions us to be able to help others simply by donating a fraction of our income to charities fighting extreme poverty. Hence, we at One for the World believe that we have a responsibility to do so.

One for the world is an intercollegiate nonprofit organisation revolutionising charitable giving to end extreme poverty by encouraging students to pledge to donate at least 1% of their post-graduate income to the world’s most effective poverty-alleviation charities. There are over 75 established chapters across universities in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. We are excited to have launched the LSE One for the World chapter this year!

Aligned with the principles of effective altruism, effective giving is a philanthropic value system that works to provide the most significant benefit per pound contributed, often quantified in terms of “cost per life saved”. Philosopher Peter Singer argued that affluent people have a moral obligation to donate a share of their income to those living in poverty until they reach a level of marginal utility, whereby giving any more would make the giver worse off than the recipient. Today, advocates of effective altruism do not propose such extremes, but the concept of effective giving and philanthropy remain integral to the movement.

The fundamental principle of effective giving is that not all giving is equal; some charities are 60 times more impactful than others. One for the World is partnered with GiveWell, the leading charity evaluator, which works to maximise the cost-effectiveness of donations. Using the research conducted at GiveWell, One for the World has created a portfolio of charities to donate to, each with a huge competitive edge over the average charity in transparency, cost-effectiveness, and calculable impact. Our nonprofit partners include the Against Malaria Foundation, which, using just $5, prevents Malaria transmission for 2-3 years by providing bed nets for at-risk people. See our impact dashboard below, showing how the average LSE graduate donating 1% of their income with One for the World could help fight against extreme poverty.

University is an expensive endeavour, particularly when combined with the cost of living crisis, so we do not ask students to start donating immediately. Instead, we encourage students to take the pledge and set their start date for the Autumn after graduation (e.g. September 2024 for second-year students), when hopefully they will feel better positioned to start donating. For the average LSE graduate’s starting salary, 1% is £33 a month. You can take the 1% pledge with One for the World via the platform Donational. Donational is entirely flexible and non-binding, allowing you to adjust the start date or the amount you donate at any time.

My personal motivations for taking the pledge surround how much luck has led to my current circumstances. I acknowledge that my place at LSE and the subsequent opportunities I have encountered were not earned purely by merit but are largely the product of the lottery of birth. I cannot ignore the extent to which being born into a peaceful society, with access to free education and health care, has significantly contributed to my current and future endeavours. Donating 1% of my income to fund evidence-driven, quantifiable good is perhaps the easiest and most effective way to help achieve a more equitable world with less human suffering. It just makes sense. It’s a humble contribution for us but a life-changing sum for some of the poorest people in the world. For a proportionally negligible amount of money (just over £1 a day), we have the opportunity to help make extreme poverty a relic of a bygone era.

Learn more about One for the World: https://www.1fortheworld.org/

Take the 1% pledge here: https://donational.org/oftw-lse

Follow us on Instagram: @1fortheworld.lse

If May has inspired you to volunteer, check out one of our other ongoing opportunities or book a one-to-one with David Coles, the Volunteer Centre Manager if you have more questions. And why not follow us on Twitter, and Instagram to stay up-to-date with our events and opportunities and read our blog for more volunteering tips and stories.