(Not-so) radical giving, day 6: Living Goods

Jen Knoch
Jen Knoch
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read
Image via Pixabay

Imagine you live somewhere out of the way and your child is sick. The Avon lady comes calling, except she’s not pushing green tea anti-wrinkle eye creams and Positively Pink lipstick, she’s got the medicine your child needs, at a discount, and she can give you advice on how to make them well again.

Living Goods makes that a reality, training community health promoters in Kenya and Uganda as both entrepreneurs and people who can provide vital products and services to their community. Travelling door to door, they sell things like medicine, safe baby delivery kits, clean-burning stoves, birth control, sanitary products, and fortified food, all at a discounted price (about 30% under market price). This delivery method means making products available in more remote places, solving supply chain problems, making all medication in the area more affordable and reliable (decreasing counterfeit pills, which are a big problem). It also uses and enhances existing social relationships, making people more receptive and more likely to receive follow-up care.

According to a major third-party randomized control trial, this is working extremely well, and Living Goods has reduced mortality in children under five by 27% and infant mortality by 33%.

And let’s not forget those Avon ladies, who aren’t just saving lives, they’re improving their own. Living Goods community health promoters learn new skills and have enhanced status in their communities, plus they earn 15–20% of their sales. (On average, they earn $150 a year, which is enough to send two to three children to school.)

GiveWell has declared it a standout charity (which is one tier below its top charities, but still an incredible designation), and The Life You Can Save, which also recommends it, notes that my $20 CDN will pay for about seven community health visits.

I’ve donated through RC Forward making my donation tax-deductible, but American friends can donate through The Life You Can Save. Women helping women and children, and also helping themselves? Easily more life-changing than even Avon’s finest youth serum can ever hope to be.

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