1% FOR HUMANITY
Achievement	Target Date	Description	Progress	Further Information

ACHIEVEMENT: Citizens of the City of Melbourne and beyond donate 1% of their taxable income to an organisation of their choice that assists developing countries.

TARGET DATE: June 2003.

PROGRESS: Achieved.

DESCRIPTION: Individuals choose to make a donation or donations to organisations such as Community Aid Abroad, World Vision, Medicines Sans Frontiers or International Help Fund Australia that have strong reputations for providing unconditional assistance to people of less fortunate developing countries.

I have made a personal commitment to donating 1% of my previous year's taxable income to Community Aid Abroad and/or Medicines Sans Frontiers or other organisations I become convinced will use my donation in the best interests of the recipients.

From June 2003, I have made a donation of 1% of my gross income to Community Aid Abroad.

Each of us could commit to making donations totalling 1% of our current taxable income, or 1% of our taxable income in the previous income tax year, so that you can be aware of the size of your donation ahead of the time you decide to make it. A person could choose to give whichever amount they found easier to calculate or plan for.

The United Nations Millennium Summit developed goals that called for poverty and hunger to be halved by 2015. Although the United Nations set a target for development aid of 0.7% of Gross National Product (GNP) Australia's foreign aid is currently around 0.27% of GNP. As personal income tax deductions are effectively subsidised by our government at your marginal tax rate; ie, if you donate an amount to an accredited organisation you can claim it as a deduction that reduces you tax by the amount of income tax you would have paid on it if you earned it, you are allowing our government to contribute more by your decision.

FURTHER INFORMATION: This idea was stimulated by Peter Singer's most recent book,One World: The Ethics of Globalisation, authored by Peter Singer, published by Text Media, Melbourne, Australia.

April 2009: Two new ideas in line with 1% For Humanity can be found at Kiva.org and the Life You Can Save webpage.

The Life You Can Save webpage is an information and pledge website that effectively puts the idea of 1% For Humanity in effect.

Kiva.org is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe. Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. I've cut and paste the following information off the Kiva.org webpage so that you can see how it operates.