I’ve been donating 5% of my income every month. Well, since I started having an income. It does feel amazing. But this is not what I was going to share.

From day one, when I decided to give away X amount of money to make this world a better place, I bumped into the question: “Who do I give the money to?” When you only have a little to share, you want to be sure that even this little bit is going to make a difference.

I know there is a bit of my money in this amazing incubator for the prematurely born babies.

Here is the dilemma – those who truly need the money (grass-root NGOs) usually do not have the voice to ask for it, and those who look sleek and credible (big foundations and charities) seem rich enough, where a little drop that I can offer will hardly make any difference. And then there is another dilemma – are the little players efficient enough to really make the difference, and are the big players going to channel my money to the charity or their own administration?In the end of the day, you just want to buy that vaccination or a textbook for a kid, and not get your money lost among the expenses of running the charity.

And then there is another question – how can I reach out to the most vulnerable people? And who are the most vulnerable people?

I decided to donate my money in Estonia, because that is where I am from. But I live in Malaysia, do charitable work here, and the misery of people and problems that I encounter here, in Malaysia, seem so enormous, that nothing in Estonia seems to match them. But then you can look at Burma (one of the least developed countries in the world), and problems in Malaysia seem like nothing to match.

I was getting increasingly overwhelmed, until, one day, I decided to take a deep breath and do it one step at a time. I decided to look at it from the perspective of one human being – a sick child in Estonia is just as unhappy as a sick child in Burma. Helping just one child will still reduce the amount of human suffering in the world, even if just by one child. And the idea is not in me alone being able to reach out to every single person in the world and to help the most miserable soul on the planet, but in every one of us helping at least one unfortunate being, making even the smallest contribution to make this world a better place.

With some kind of a peace of mind, I started looking into Estonian charitable causes, I donated to some hospitals, and… I got stuck again. I just couldn’t find decent information on which would be the best cause to donate to. And then I came across a donation portal on the website of Swedbank – one of Estonia’s biggest banks – it had it all nice and clear. It might not be good enough if you are running a donor organisation, but it is more than enough for a private individual.

I want to share the link with everyone: https://www.swedbank.ee/about/support/donate/projects (you can see it in English if you press ENG in the corner of the banner picture), and I hope that at least every Estonian, who comes across this blog article, will feel like giving. It is so easy, and so amazingly fulfilling!