Dear friend,

The fight against climate change is already as hard as it is but it doesn't just mean fighting natural elements. Turns out, it doesn't even mean just fighting big conglomerates, trying to change government policies or trying to convince people that what we're doing to our planet is destroying it. For some people, being a climate activist means putting your own and your loved ones' lives in danger. Latin America is one of the most dangerous places for climate activists, especially women. Read this excellent piece from Open Democracy on the challenges women activists in Latin America face in their fight against climate change.

Berta Cáceres solidarity rally, Honduras 2016. Photo: Flickr/Daniel Cima/CIDH. CC BY 2.0.

If we want to stop humanity from destroying the living planet we need to start thinking beyond the current time and beyond borders. SpaceBuzz is an organisation that is aiming to do both. It's based on the idea of the 'overview effect', something that astronauts who see the earth from outer space experience, that allows them to see it as a "fragile ball of life". SpaceBuzz's mission is to give this experience to as many children so that they will grow up not taking the earth for granted. We talked with Spacebuzz's founder Hidde Hoogcarspel to see where Spacebuzz is headed (other than to infinity and beyond).

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Dogs could help us win the fight against COVID-19

Solutions

Written by
Davide Banis

on
30 March 2020

One of the brightest beacons of hope in these dark times is that, in between vaccine research, more rapid tests and new epidemiological models, the scientific community is working relentlessly to find the most effective ways to stop the spread of COVID-19.

And dogs might join the fight soon, too. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a top institution in the field of infectious diseases, teamed up with British charity Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University to research how man's best friends can be trained to sniff out Coronavirus. The idea is that dogs will help provide non-invasive diagnosis towards the end of the epidemic, for example, by identifying people carrying the virus in airports or other public spaces.

“Our previous work demonstrated that dogs can detect odours from humans with a malaria infection with extremely high accuracy – above the World Health Organization standards for a diagnostic," said Professor James Logan, Head of the Department of Disease Control at LSHTM.

“It's early days for COVID-19 odour detection. We do not know if COVID-19 has a specific odour yet, but we know that other respiratory diseases change our body odour so there is a chance that it does. And if it does dogs will be able to detect it. This new diagnostic tool could revolutionise our response to COVID-19,” he added.

As surprising as it may sound, the idea isn’t new. In addition to malaria, dogs are already being trained to detect diseases like cancer, Parkinson's and some bacterial infections.

“The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic and tell us whether they need to be tested. This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS testing resources are only used where they are really needed,” commented Dr Claire Guest, CEO and Co-Founder of Medical Detection Dogs.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicinehas set up a Response Fund to accelerate the research of effective solutions to the pandemic. A donation to them will go a long way in speeding up the pace of research and providing reliable, scientific information about the emergency.

This story features:

Dogs / Covid-19

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How Kinder helps charities become more impactful, effective and knowledge-driven

Company blogs

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
26 March 2020

Just like their for-profit counterparts, even more so, not-for-profit organisations need analysis and consultancy. However, unlike for-profit companies, charitable organisations often lack the resources to be able to afford external entities conducting research for them and giving them advice on how to improve. Especially for smaller organisations with not a lot of time and money to spare, making external research consultancy a regular practice can be very costly and can take away from other, more urgent needs.

Kinder is here to fill in this gap in the charitable sector. We analyse charitable organisations based on the Kinder Vetting Framework we’ve built with the help of Impact Center Erasmus and give them bespoke advice on how to improve based on their results. We don’t charge organisations for this service, all an organisation needs to do to start using our services is to sign up to our Charity Zone.

We analyse charitable organisations using our own vetting framework for four reasons: to provide the organisation with an outside perspective on their efforts, to benchmark them against others working in the same area, to advise them on how to improve, and to inform the public about the efforts of these organisations. We see research as a big catalyst in improving the charitable sector and people’s trust in it.

Our vetting is done by a dedicated team of specially trained volunteers and overseen by our research team, professionals with an extensive background in research and the charitable sector. Our team vets organisations on a rolling basis to keep up with both their efforts and the improvements in the sector. All of the insight that we gather from our continuous analysis, we share with organisations.

For example, if we can’t find evidence that an organisation has employed a strong thinking model for strategic planning, that organisation would score low on the ‘Causal Chain’ section of our analysis. When they go to their profile to check their results however, they won’t only see their score but also our advice on the benefits of using a thinking model. On top of the advice, they will get access to Kinder’s step by step guide to the Theory of Change model.

The nature of our analysis is to make charitable organisations’ work as efficient as possible, their fundraising as cost-efficient as possible, their image in the public eye as excellent as possible and their projects as visible as possible.

We have already vetted over 2000 organisations. This means we have insight into a lot of them. We use this insight to benchmark each organisation against others in the same field they are working in. This information, just like their results, is shared with the organisations so they can develop an understanding of their place within the sector. In the future, we are going to connect organisations with each other so they can share their expertise and lift each other up.

If you’re a charitable organisation and want to get a free analysis, custom advice, innovative donation tools and extend the reach of your stories by joining the Kinder ecosystem, all you have to do is sign up to our Charity Zone. Let’s make the world a kinder place.

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Stories that matter: Kinder employs storytelling for impact

Company blogs

Written by
Deniz Gulsoken

on
26 March 2020

Kinder started off with a simple idea: I want to donate but I don’t know how to or to whom.

Making the world a better place, helping others that are less fortunate, saving the planet, these ideas are present at our current stage more than ever. People want to do good, they want to help out organisations that are doing good. Yet, they don’t know where to start or who to trust.

Purposeful storytelling is the future of philanthropy and one of Kinder’s three pillars. Transparency and accountability are what we ask of all the organisations in our system. We don’t just analyse charitable organisations and help them improve, we also share their stories with the public. We want to make sure people who are looking to contribute to a kinder world have all the information they need, to make decisions they are proud of.

We use our in-house media platform Kinder World to turn the insight from our research into impactful stories that drive people to donate to causes and problems they are reading about. Every organisation that signs up to Kinder’s platform charitable organisations Charity Zone, gets direct access to our editorial team.

We’ve got a team of writers working alongside our researchers who are deeply knowledgeable about the sector and guest writers, each an expert in their subject. Using the same insight, we make sure organisations who are doing great and score amongst the highest get the attention they deserve by actively promoting them and helping them reach large audiences.

We work alongside organisations, and other media outlets and big brands, to make sure their stories reach people who are concerned and who want to help.

We read about catastrophic crises, like climate change, or disasters, like Australian bushfires, but too often it is just the problem that gets the spotlight and not the solutions. When it comes to the big problems the world is facing, Kinder provides much-needed knowledge about the problem. Yet, our editorial focus is solution-based. So, we don’t just write about the problems, we direct our audience towards solutions to those problems in the form of charitable organisations that are solving them, helping organisations raise funds along the way.

Whether someone cares about saving the Borneo orangutans, preserving rainforests, or decreasing the meat industry’s climate impact we’ve got a story and an organisation they can donate to help solve the problem.

Stories become more powerful the more they are shared. We don’t want to stop at our own platform when it comes telling the stories of organisations who are doing great work. That’s why we’re working on several partnerships with big media brands so that these stories can reach every corner around the globe.

In a sense, Kinder is a PR agency for the charitable sector, we work hard to extend the reach of organisations’ visibility. The difference from a regular PR agency, however, is that profit is not the purpose of our storytelling. We don’t work for a big conglomerate trying to greenwash their name, or a company trying to sell sustainable branded products. Our main client is the planet and its inhabitants: humans, animals and all living organisms. The only reason we want our stories to make noise is so that they can make an impact.

We’ve already vetted over 2000 organisations and started asking them to join us in the Charity Zone. Register to join them, start telling your stories and raising additional funds.

Together, we can make the world a kinder place.

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To infinity and beyond

Dear friend,

More Stories

Dogs could help us win the fight against COVID-19

How Kinder helps charities become more impactful, effective and knowledge-driven

Stories that matter: Kinder employs storytelling for impact