Teacher Content Information

What does this unit aim to do?

This unit allows students to explore how behaviours related to compassionate giving influence the health, safety, relationships, and overall wellbeing of both individuals and communities. Throughout these three lessons, students will delve into the concept of compassionate giving, considering its benefits and challenges.

Students will be inspired and empowered to help people build better lives by reflecting on factors that influence how we make charitable decisions to understand how we can give to those who have no personal connection to us, considering the moral and ethical aspects of charitable giving as well as evaluating the effectiveness of nonprofits to become aware of the importance of ensuring giving is informed and impactful.

This unit allows students to deepen their skills of empathy and critical thinking, emphasising the positive impact of compassionate actions on both individuals and broader communities.

Created with The Life You Can Save

This unit was created in collaboration with The Life You Can Save. The Life You Can Save works to eliminate poverty. They look into different non-profits that are running highly impactful programs to help reduce poverty.

They figure out which programs work well to solve problems stemming from poverty and then try to tell more people about them to gain support. They also help connect people who want to donate money with these nonprofits, so their donations can make a big impact. They aim to create a world where everyone has an opportunity to build a great life and where there’s no suffering or death due to extreme poverty.

This unit and others in The Life You Can Save suite of lessons aim to use authentic examples that lead to engaging discussions, ethical considerations, critical thinking [on effective giving], and practical ways to make a positive impact. Equipping students with the tools to become informed, empathetic global citizens, shaping a future where each individual's choices contribute to a world where every life matters.

You can find out more about the Life You Can Save at their website. Their founder, Peter Singer, wrote the first edition of The Life You Can Save to demonstrate why we should care about and help those living in global extreme poverty and how easy it is to improve and even save lives by giving effectively. To delve more deeply into the themes and ideas in this unit, you can access a free copy of the eBook or listen to the free audiobook narrated by Kristen Bell, Stephen Fry, Paul Simon and more on Spotify.

Unit Structure

Tune In

Explore the factors influencing charitable giving and examine how practising compassionate giving can have a positive impact on the well-being of both individuals and communities.

Lesson 1 - The Impact of Compassionate Giving

Find Out

Explore the moral and ethical aspects of charitable giving and create a shared moral code for guiding others to make the world a better place

Lesson 2 - The Benefits of Giving

Take Action

Explore how compassionate giving influences the wellbeing of individuals and communities and investigate how to make the most informed and impactful choices with our resources.

Lesson 3 - Increasing the Impact of Compassionate Giving

Important Lesson Information

Safety

Psychological safety:

These lessons address potentially sensitive topics such as economic privilege, poverty, and the ethics of compassionate giving. Discussion around privilege and poverty may be a sensitive topic for some students. It’s important to create an inclusive and respectful environment that acknowledges diverse perspectives and experiences related to economic status. Teachers should be mindful of potential variations in students' backgrounds. Ensure any discussions are a safe space for students to express their thoughts and feelings. Discussions around compassionate giving may lead students to reflect on their own values and actions. Teachers should approach this reflection as an opportunity for personal growth rather than imposing specific beliefs.

Content

Extension Opportunity

Get your class involved in Charity Elections!

Run by Giving What We Can, Charity Elections is a program that allows school students to use basic principles of charity evaluation to choose among three high-impact non-profits, all listed with Giving What We Can (GWWC), over a week—three sessions—of discussion, reflection, research and voting. A lesson plan is laid out in a self-contained slideshow provided to your school. Once your students vote, a pot of up to $2,000 (sponsored by GWWC) flows to the charities in a proportion chosen by the school.

The experience exposes young people to underlying principles of effective altruism with the aim of expanding the global community of people who incorporate them into their decision-making, especially around giving. The program is designed to empower students as changemakers and foster a culture of giving and giving effectively. Charity Elections have been developed as a program for secondary students, but teachers of younger students have also run successful events.

Apply here to run the program across a set of classes or the entire school!

Additional Information

Prerequisites

This is the third lesson within the Health and Physical Education unit, Increasing Wellbeing Through Compassionate Action. Cool recommends that you teach this lesson as a part of the 3-lesson package.

Activity/partner-specific information

These great resources from The Life You Can Save are used throughout the entire suite of units created in collaboration with The Life You Can Save.

Best Charities
- Their list of recommended non-profits features over 20 high-impact organisations people can support with confidence. This list helps people find high-impact, cost-effective non-profits so they can give with confidence and save and improve more lives.
The Shallow Pond Thought Experiment by Peter Singer, founder of The Life You Can Save
- A simple thought exercise that shows how our assumed moral priorities are not necessarily the guideposts by which we’re navigating our lives.

The Shallow Pond: Would You Save a Drowning Child? - The Life You Can Save (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu-WUHD6mKg)

Impact Calculator
- Shows the substantial variety of achievements that can be realised through giving. When used with the detailed information provided about their recommended non-profits, it can provide tangible examples of just how much good giving can do.
Charity Evaluation Framework
- An adaptive evaluation framework that is applied to nonprofits working with a wide range of causes and approaches to creating impact. The framework helps The Life You Can Save identify more great nonprofits that are working to reduce the burden of poverty for hundreds of millions of people and offers their supporters greater choice around how and where to give.

Further learning and reading

Charities V Nonprofits

You might notice that these lessons use the word ‘nonprofit’ instead of ‘charity’ in many instances. The term “charity” can carry historical connotations of a paternalistic approach, implying a one-sided act of saving others. Using the term “nonprofits” aims to emphasise collaborative efforts, focusing on the establishment of healthy contexts that enable individuals to lead dignified and productive lives.

What does it mean to say ‘years of quality life’?

Non-profits, especially those trying to improve public health, need to be able to determine the impact they are having on the problems they are trying to address. One way they do this is by considering the ‘years of quality life added’ that evidence shows is due to the non-profit’s programs. Other scientists might want to measure how significantly a problem affects people. They might use the same idea to estimate the ‘years of quality life lost’ because of a disease.

A way to think about this is as if a person, let’s call them Sasha, has a favourite park nearby. They go there every day, all year long, and can keep using it once they are grown. That park, its playgrounds and fields represent living a full life.

If Sasha is sick or disabled, they cannot use the park as often or as well. Over the course of a year, they lose some of the enjoyable time there that they would have otherwise. This is sometimes called ‘years lived with disability.’ They may not feel good enough to go to the park often or may not be able to enjoy the playground equipment to the fullest.

Other areas of their lives might also be limited, like pursuing a hobby or going to school. Five years of this situation might count as only three or four years of ‘quality life.’

Of course, if they die early due to a disease or malnutrition, for example, they lose many years of use of the park. The years of using the park that they might have lived otherwise would be called ‘years of healthy life lost.’

Scientists use these sorts of measurements to figure out how different diseases and health problems affect people and communities. It helps them prioritise which health issues need more attention to keep everyone as healthy and happy as possible.

Increasing the Impact of Compassionate Giving

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Summary

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UN Sustainable Development Goals

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