GDLive is Live!
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GDLive is Live!


Here’s GiveDirectly’s note introducing their new feature:

During this past emotional month, GiveDirectly had the exciting launch of GDLive. We hope this project can provide an uplifting channel and a reflection of your collective compassion for the global poor through an honest look into their lives and the impact of your investments.

GDLive provides an unfiltered, near real-time connection with program participants, allowing you to hear directly from them and not us.

While you can find “success stories” and pictures of poor people smiling anywhere, what hasn’t been done before is letting the poor speak for themselves, with no filter, about the things that are important to them, in real time. We’re not editing or curating the feedback to make sure it’s happy, or fits a narrative. We’re letting it hit your screen the moment it hits our database. And in doing so, we hope to provide a platform for the under-heard to speak directly to those who can effect change.

Follow GiveDirectly Participants

Here’s how it works:

GiveDirectly field officers check in with cash transfer recipients at multiples stages of the process to see how things are going. The collected recipient updates are published unedited on GDLive for the GiveDirectly community to browse to get a better idea of how their gifts are helping alleviate extreme poverty. This process respects donors’ interest in knowing more about how their dollars are being used to improve lives. It also respects recipients’ privacy: it is up to the recipients whether to participate in GDLive; for those who do opt in, all information is stored in a secure database; the information that is shared publicly does not include last names or village locations.

You can explore profiles and choose a few program participants to follow on their journey with GiveDirectly. As you receive updates, you’ll learn more about their ambitions, how they plan to spend the money they receive, and the impact your donations are having on their lives and communities.

We hope that GDLive will both inspire and challenge you, and lead to some conversations you wouldn’t normally have. And we hope it will jumpstart new connections between our community of donors and our community of recipients by fostering a sense of mutual respect.


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GiveDirectly

GiveDirectly is a recommended charity of The Life You Can Save. Using cell phone technology, GiveDirectly provides direct cash transfers to recipients living in extreme poverty. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that these direct transfers drastically improve the lives of GiveDirectly’s participants, their families, and communities.


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The views expressed in blog posts are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Peter Singer or The Life You Can Save.