Edit 1/29: Funding is back, baby!
Crossposted from my blog.
(This could end up being the most important thing I’ve ever written. Please like and restack it—if you have a big blog, please write about it).
A mother holds her sick baby to her chest. She knows he doesn’t have long to live. She hears him coughing—those body-wracking coughs—that expel mucus and phlegm, leaving him desperately gasping for air. He is just a few months old. And yet that’s how old he will be when he dies.
The aforementioned scene is likely to become increasingly common in the coming years. Fortunately, there is still hope.
Trump recently signed an executive order shutting off almost all foreign aid. Most terrifyingly, this included shutting off the PEPFAR program—the single most successful foreign aid program in my lifetime. PEPFAR provides treatment and prevention of HIV and AIDS—it has saved about 25 million people since its implementation in 2001, despite only taking less than 0.1% of the federal budget. Every single day that it is operative, PEPFAR supports:
> * More than 222,000 people on treatment in the program collecting ARVs to stay healthy;
> * More than 224,000 HIV tests, newly diagnosing 4,374 people with HIV – 10% of whom are pregnant women attending antenatal clinic visits;
> * Services for 17,695 orphans and vulnerable children impacted by HIV;
> * 7,163 cervical cancer screenings, newly diagnosing 363 women with cervical cancer or pre-cancerous lesions, and treating 324 women with positive cervical cancer results;
> * Care and support for 3,618 women experiencing gender-based violence, including 779 women who experienced sexual violence.
The most important thing PEPFAR does is provide life-saving anti-retroviral treatments to millions of victims of HIV. More than 20 million people living with HIV globally depend on daily anti-retrovirals, including over half a million children. These children, facing a deadly illness in desperately poor countries, are now going
Martingale, this kind of an effort seems quite a bit different from the core efforts of effective altruism. Consequently, I suspect that this question won't get much traction that you probably won't get many useful suggestions. An additional factor is that volunteering in distant places for a short period of time has some complications involved in it. You can read here if you want an introduction to some of the ideas, or explore the book Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism if you want a more in-depth exploration. In general, I'd encourage you to have different mental buckets for "doing good" and for "travel/leisure."
However, if you are set on using your time/effort to volunteer in Argentina, I think that the subreddit for Argentina might be able to give you some suggestions. I'm guessing that most NGOs or non-profit organizations wouldn't find it a good use of their resources to provide financial help to your kids, but you can try reaching out to Habitat for Humanity in Argentina, or to organizations like International Volunteer HQ.