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Comment by TwoWheelWonder | Hacker News Reader

How is this different from the typical charity/NGO donation drives of "donate 39 cents a day" ad? I saw how introducing personal connections to individual medical treatments was different from the norm, however this now seems to reverse that by going right back to the old school, typical, individual international aid style of monthly monetary donations.

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They're not reversing anything... They're just providing a way for people who want to donate to Watsi, but don't care to spend the time to find a particular patient.

They aren't doing away with the old 'pick a patient' method, they're just adding another option.

To be more clear: I'm not saying that they are reversing their "pick a patient" method. I'm saying that I saw how the "pick a patient" powered by the web model was an evolution among international aid / charity models. The "big generic fund" model however clearly is not. I'm not saying it's not convenient, I'm saying I don't see how going back to a model that's been used for decades is useful when such a model is arguably ineffectual at building deeper cross-cultural relationships. Not to mention that neither of these models of international aid or public health build anything sustainable.

A quick clarification here: joining the Universal Fund doesn't mean that we charge your credit card an amount every month and you have no idea where or who your donation is going towards. Every month, we automatically pick a patient your donation goes towards, and you get an email with the patient's story, and an update email after the patient's medical procedure.

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