Giving money to charities is a challenging thing. Charities, in most countries, have to deal with local corrupt officials. Giving money to charities unwittingly

Giving money to charities is a challenging thing. Charities, in most countries, have to deal with local corrupt officials. Giving money to charities unwittingly promotes corruption. I remember few years back there was a sentiment expressed by lots of African NGOs that the west should not send money to the continent as "charity" because that increases corruption; instead they should help stop the root cause of the problem i.e. stop exploitation of resources, stop funding and supplying arms or puppet governments. I personally have not given any money directly to charities. As I work in tech, my salary was better than others in the family, and I use to give all my salary to my parents. So I was asked just twice(once by my aDad and once by my Uncle) if I would mind if some money was given to charity work. And this was very specificrequests. One was for a blind students school which was run by my Dad's friend and the other was for restoration of a guest house of a very ancient templein Goa(recently I saw a video on YouTube of the work that temple committe has done and was very happy with what they have achieved since I last visited them). My sister on the other hand gives regularly to charities. But she gives very specific things to very specific charities. She first visited those charities multiple times before deciding on supporting them. And she has avoided giving money, instead she gives every month 5kg rice each to an orphanage and a blind students school. She also occasionallyo kids from these two charities for events at a theme park which we own. I once asked her why she does not give money to these two charities and she said that she will not know where this money will go. With specific help, she knows that the real needs are being served. So my advice to anyone thinking of giving to charity is to actually visit the place multiple times; if possible, volunteer there for sometime and then give very specific help and avoid giving cash.