Who donates the most?
The non-governmental organization Charities Aid Foundation calculates the World Charity Index each year, ranking about 150 countries by the number of donor citizens. The study is based on three key questions that are posed to hundreds of thousands of respondents:
● Did you help a stranger?
● Did you donate money to charity?
● Have you spent time volunteering?
The answers are scored and averaged. 144 countries made it into the ranking of 2018. The pedestal lineup was pretty surprising. The ten leaders looks like this:
1. Indonesia
2. Australia
3. New Zealand
4. United States
5. Ireland
6. United Kingdom
7. Singapore
8. Kenya
9. Myanmar
10. Bahrain
Indonesia seems to be the most volunteering country in the world with 53% of the population. In Myanmar, they donate the most money to charity with 88% of the population. Libya (28th place in the overall ranking) is the country with the most help provided to strangers with 83% of the population. The last five places in the ranking are even more amazing than the pedestal itself:
140. Cambodia
141. Palestine
142. China
143. Greece
144. Yemen
Of course, the outsider position of China is shocking. We will talk more about Chinese charity in the next article. There are nuances and not everything is that simple. Let us go back to the pedestal. Why did Kenya, Myanmar and Bahrain climb so high? We can answer that! Almost the entire population of Myanmar practices the oldest school of Theravada Buddhism, according to which it is customary to donate money to monks. In Kenya, it is tradition to help strangers and children. And donations for the construction of mosques are popular in Bahrain.
