Poverty is incredibly sad, and I understand the desire to want to take some direct action to fight it. And of course, if you want to volunteer your time, you ce

Poverty is incredibly sad, and I understand the desire to want to take some direct action to fight it. And of course, if you want to volunteer your time, you certainly can and I'm sure people will be grateful. However, for those with in demand, high value skills like people HN, I suggest you focus your time on using those skills effectively. You can do more good by just earning more income and donating money to good charities than donating your time. To illustrate this point, consider this extreme case -- what if a young Steve Jobs had poured extra energy into serving soup at a local church to the homeless and had not gotten Apple off the ground? Yes, he would directly help hungry people. However, he has created so much wealth by forming Apple that not only does he have far more money that he could give away, but he's also created an entire company of employees with more wealth that they could also choose to give to charity.