Acumen argues that these businesses, because they earn profits and treat the poor as customers, are more sustainable than giveaways. This reflects a growing trend of using business mechanisms to fight poverty. 
 
  Afghan Institute of Learning, www.creatinghope.org , is an aid group run by Afghan women. It is led by Sakena Yacoobi, a force of nature who was educated in the United States , and it now serves 350,000 Afghan women and children annually. 
 
 Yacoobi runs education programs, training centers and clinics, emphasizing local buy-in and self-reliance. Western aid programs in Afghanistan have not always been successful, and my hunch is that if more aid had been routed through Afghan-managed programs like this, more would have been accomplished. 
 
 Photo 
 
  BRAC, www.brac.net , is a Bangladeshi antipoverty organization that has had huge success serving tens of millions of people there and is now branching out to Afghanistan and Africa . It emphasizes organizing village women and promoting education, health and microfinance . 
 
 One of BRAC’s strengths is its ability to turn impoverished women into agents of change for the entire community. 
 
  Developments in Literacy, www.dil.org , builds terrific modern schools in Pakistan , particularly for girls. It frustrates me that rural Pakistan abounds with hard-line madrassas financed by fundamentalist Muslims who channel the students toward extremism. Extremists recognize the transformative power of education, and so should we. This is a security issue, for D.I.L. schools can help protect us from terrorism. 
 
 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. 
 
  Deworm the World, www.dewormtheworld.org , tackles a problem most Americans don’t even think about: intestinal worms. Most kids in poor countries have worms, and the result is anemia , malnutrition and sicknesses that cause absences from school. One of the most cost-effective ways of getting more children into school appears to be deworming them with one pill a year, for about 50 cents per person reached. 
 
  SOIL, www.oursoil.org , is bringing dry, composting toilets to Haiti. Run by two remarkable American women, SOIL operates on a shoestring budget in impoverished communities. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 One aim is to improve sanitation and public health. Another is to compost waste so that it can be safely used as fertilizer to boost agricultural production. 
 
  Sustainable Health Enterprises, www.sheinnovates.com , is a new effort to help women and girls in poor countries to manage menstruation, so that they miss less school and work. S.H.E. is trying to help African women start their own businesses based on making and distributing low-cost sanitary pads. 
 
 Although one Nepal study found contrary evidence, education experts increasingly believe that a cost-effective way to keep high school girls from dropping out in poor countries is to help provide them with sanitary products and perhaps ibuprofen for cramps. 
 
  The Worldwide Fistula Fund, www.wfmic.org , and the Fistula Foundation, www.fistulafoundation.org , are dedicated to correcting a childbirth injury that is one of the worst things that can happen to a person: an obstetric fistula. This is an internal injury that leaves a girl or young woman incontinent, leaking wastes, scorned and ostracized. 
 
 A $450 surgical repair can usually solve the problem and give these young women their lives back. For fistula sufferers, it’s truly the gift of a lifetime. ||||| Ms. Garcia wants second-grader-size binoculars. Mrs. Scott wants insect nets for her high school zoology students. And Ms. Jetter wants volleyballs, hula hoops and jump ropes for her class. 
 
 Now, these Bay Area teachers — and others across the country who posted requests for help on the popular teacher fundraising site DonorsChoose.org — are going to get all they’ve asked for. 
 
 That’s $29 million in library books and computers. Field trips, trombones and microscopes. Backpacks filled with pens and paper. 
 
 A high-flying San Francisco cryptocurrency startup company, Ripple, is paying for more than 35,600 classroom requests made on the nonprofit crowdfunding platform — a donation that the host of “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert, announced during his Tuesday night broadcast. 
 
 Hours before, Lily Jefferies had no idea her dream of taking a class of public high school students camping in the Grand Canyon was about to come true. 
 
 Now Playing: 
 
 The science teacher at Coliseum College Preparatory Academy in Oakland had used DonorsChoose.org before, to buy calculators and even pencils. The out-of-state trip was a big ask — more than $4,000 — but she figured there was no harm in trying. 
 
 While part of the request for rental cars to drive the students had already been funded by small donors, Jeffries was short $2,300 for food, campsite rentals, gas and other needs. 
 
 Many of her environmental science students have never been out of California, she said. She wants to “get them away from their phones, away from Oakland,” and into nature to see geology up close, to study the history of indigenous people. 
 
 “The kids keep asking me about it,” she said. But she’s only been able to tell them she doesn’t have the funding yet. On Wednesday, she will have a different answer. 
 
 The Ripple funding, the largest single virtual currency gift to a charity, was a guarded secret in the days before the announcement. The idea was to prevent a run on the site, with DonorsChoose.org officials using code names to keep the plan under wraps. 
 
 In the past, large donations have funded every request in a single city or even state — including a $1 million donation to cover every California request in 2010. But the total clearing of the site is unprecedented, said DonorsChoose.org founder Charles Best. 
 
 “In 18 years of doing DonorsChoose.org, we have, honestly, honestly, never been this excited,” he said. “I would say it’s the dream coming true, except we never had this dream because it would have been too crazy to even say.” 
 
 The cryptocurrency has been converted into dollars, which the nonprofit will use to fulfill the requests, buying the books or sending funding to bus companies for field trips. Teachers don’t receive cash directly, and DonorsChoose.org charges $30 per project and an optional fee of 15 percent to help fund the organization. 
 
 Best said the donation started with an email request to Ripple founder Chris Larsen, who had been a supporter of the nonprofit group years earlier. 
 
 “I kind of dared myself to send an email pitching an idea 10 times bigger than I’ve ever pitched before,” Best said. “I was almost anxious that they would be offended by the ridiculousness of my ask.” 
 
 But at Ripple, which created a blockchain system to transfer currency globally, and which owns the largest share of the cryptocurrency XRP, company executives said the donation reflected the gratitude they had for the teachers in their own lives. 
 
 For Monica Long, senior vice president of marketing, that was her 10th-grade world history teacher, who helped her connect the dots between historically significant events and their impact on society. 
 
 “Education is definitely an area we really care about, and you can expect from us further investment there,” she said. 
 
 On Tuesday morning in East Palo Alto, teacher Sarah Moulder didn’t know what was coming. She zigzagged around the chairs and music stands crowded into her portable classroom, getting ready for the next batch of students, a conductor’s baton pushed into her ponytail so she wouldn’t lose it. 
 
 Moulder, a music teacher at Ravenswood Middle School, is among the die-hard DonorsChoose.org teachers, maintaining a list of supplies for her orchestra and band classes on the site. When something gets funded, she posts another request. 
 
 Over the years she’s had dozens of wishes funded, including new saxophone reeds, trombone oil, an electric piano and a plastic skeleton named Dr. Bones, which she uses to demonstrate proper posture and technique. 
 
 Her current wish list totals $4,425 — money for a viola, a hand grip to teach cello technique, T-shirts, screen-print supplies to make band uniforms, and software programs for 160 students to help them practice at school and at home. 
 
 Moulder has seen about 60 requests funded, totaling $63,000 in support, and said she can’t afford not to ask for donations. At her school, 40 percent of students are considered homeless and 97 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. 
 
 Every time she gets a package, she said, it’s like Christmas. 
 
 “The kids come from very, very, very poor homes,” she said. “I want them to have equal footing.” ||||| I saw this story on one of my favorite sites, Humans of New York, and it moved me to tears. This man has suffered profound loss that would crush the spirit of many people and yet he still passionately wants a chance to contribute positively to the world. If we don’t welcome people like this into our communities and empower his dream of making an impact with his life, then we’re not the country we tell ourselves we are. Let’s reject the 'anti-human’ voices that tell us to fear refugees and show this man and his family what Americans are really made of. Let’s show that a country built by the energy and dreams of immigrants still believes in brave people who come here with hope for better life. 
 
 Everything we raise here will go to help this family so that the father can get the medical treatment he needs to live and pursue his work, and his family can build a new stable life after their tragedy, and…as the Scientist beautifully expresses…to support his dream of contributing to the world. 
 
 Thanks to Humans of New York for sharing these stories. Thanks to the team at CrowdRise for putting this together and figuring out how to get even the credit card transaction fees covered so we can get the maximum to the family. 
 
 Thanks to everyone who rallies together to create the power of the crowd. If enough of us kick in the price of two frappucinos, we can probably transform the experience of this family and show them that life can deliver healing and kindness, not just heartbreak. 
 
 Thanks to Benevolent, all donations are tax-deductible. We will work with Benevolent to use all donated funds to help this family and will seek to use any excess or unused funds to help the other 11 profiled in the HONY ‘Syrian American’ series. 
 
 Edward Norton ||||| It's not easy being rich. 
 
 While many college kids work internships this summer, the sons and daughters from 20 of the world's richest families will head to New York to learn how to wield their money and power—the right way. 
 
 The $25,000, six-week program launching in June is designed to give the next generation of wealth clues to running a business and giving to charity. Participants will also take trips to "the most exquisite weekend get-a-ways," including the Hamptons, Cape Cod and the Berkshires, according to the program's brochure. 
 
 Called Global Fellows in Social Enterprise, the program is the brainchild of Michael Loeb, a millionaire media magnate who threw a private launch party Wednesday night at his ornate Upper East Side brownstone. 
 
 "Why are we targeting high-net-worth families? It's not because we're snobs," Mr. Loeb said to a crowd of potential participating families and donors, including Silda Wall Spitzer, the wife of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, and Susan and David Rockefeller Jr., the philanthropy and business power couple. "It's because these are the people that frankly have the resources to really make big changes in the world," said Mr. Loeb, who founded magazine marketing company Synapse Group Inc., which he sold to Time Warner Inc. in a deal valued in 2001 at $500 million. He now runs a private-equity firm focusing on media and the Internet. 
 
 Leading the day-to-day operations of the Global Fellows program is Abby Raphel, co-founder of a private, invitation-only social network for rich kids called A-Society.com. 
 
 Mr. Loeb encouraged guests at the cocktail party to provide him with names of potential attendees and implored them to dig in to the pounds of shrimp cocktail and lobster quesadillas he'd positioned around his home. 
 
 Run in partnership with New York University's Robert F. Wagner's Graduate School of Public Service and the nonprofit Echoing Green, Global Fellows will offer participants formal coursework, a business-plan competition and a four-week internship with so-called social-enterprise nonprofits such as VisionSpring, which helps local entrepreneurs in developing countries sell eyeglasses. 
 
 According to the brochure, the program also offers "bespoke services...available through trusted consultants for an array of interests: travel, entertainment, dining and lifestyle experiences." 
 
 Parents will be eligible for a $2,500 tax deduction, as Global Fellows plans to donate $2,500 per participant to charities as a way to thank them for hosting the students for internship programs. 
 
 Participants will also work with business-strategy coaches and "captains of industry" who will "provide wisdom and perspective to these kids," Mr. Loeb said, offering up as an example the Rockefellers, who read prepared remarks to guests about their experiences with wealth. 
 
 "People expect us to be a savior of their cause and you have to know how to graciously deal with that," Ms. Rockefeller said, recounting an experience with a nonprofit for which she agreed to host a reception in her home, only to be accosted later for a $500,000 gift. 
 
 Mr. Loeb acknowledges criticisms of the program as a camp for rich kids, but says that description couldn't be more far off: "This isn't for kids of the elite to pal around." 
 
 In an interview Thursday, Ms. Rockefeller said: "It really is a niche that hasn't been developed, especially the social entrepreneurship aspect, which is looking at how people of wealth can take a portfolio approach to their investing." 
 
 Global Fellows will be run as a nonprofit entity; Mr. Loeb has so far funded it with "tens of thousands of dollars." He said any profits will be donated to the charities hosting the internship programs. 
 
 "I always thought the trepidation high-net-worth people have about their kids growing up right was a Champagne problem until I found out it was really real," Mr. Loeb says. "I see the program as a service to these kids who are perplexed and have a lot of questions." 
 
 Write to Shelly Banjo at shelly.banjo@wsj.com and Erica Orden at erica.orden@wsj.com ||||| As with every disaster both man-made and natural, people outside of Houston are scouring the web for charities to whom they can donate in the wake of the deadly Hurricane Harvey. Through the chatter, however, one theme has emerged — news organizations urging readers to avoid donating to the American Red Cross. 
 
 News sites across the political spectrum, from Slate to the New York Times and Democracy Now! to Bloomberg, have published editorials in recent days detailing the reasons users shouldn’t give their hard-earned cash to the well-known and mostly-beloved charity. Their main evidence? The organization’s terrible response to Hurricane Katrina in 2006, the Haitian earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012. 
 
 SPONSORED 
 
 In an article published on Wednesday, Bloomberg noted that ProPublica has uncovered the ARC’s shady spending practices. 
 
 “Not only is the charity less than transparent with how it has used donors’ money,” the Bloomberg report reads, “it has been intentionally misleading. Its claim that 91 cents of every dollar goes to disaster victims was called ‘not true‘ by NPR and ProPublica. The organization even went so far as to say its spending practices were ‘a trade secret.'” 
 
 Beyond criticism of their financial structure, the organization has always been criticized for the way they handled the many climate change-fueled disasters in recent years. One of the widest-shared figures recounts how the organization claimed to have provided housing for 130,000 people in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, but had only built six houses. 
 
 Journalists who witnessed the ARC’s poor responses to natural disasters. Dan Gillimor, a veteran reporter and professor at Arizona State’s Walter Kronkite School of Journalism, advised people not support the organization based on their poor track record, as did Slate’s Jonathan Katz. 
 
 “ARC was roundly blasted in the U.S. for its shambolic response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, with international observers warning that elements were so bad that they verged on criminal wrongdoing,” Katz, who was on the ground in Haiti when the earthquate hit, wrote. “Seven years later, despite an internal retooling effort, it failed again in 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac. (The response was ‘worse than the storm,’ one Red Cross driver told ProPublica during its jaw-dropping investigation.)” 
 
 The good news is that the ARC is far from the only organization providing relief to Harvey’s continuously-growing list of victims. As NPR reports, there are dozens of organizations, many specialized, that are on the ground in Houston. 
 
 Raw Story’s picks for some of the most worthy local and national charities responding to Harvey are The Center for Disaster Philanthropy, The Greater Houston Community Foundation, Feeding Texas, the Texas Diaper Bank and Austin Pets Alive!. 
 
 In addition to monetary donations, many people are working to donate menstrual products to people in Houston who have had to do without since the storm hit. 
 
 You can find a search through a large list of charity organizations to donate to via Charity Navigator as well.
– “Tired of celebrating spiritual holidays with crass commercialism?” writes Nicholas D. Kristof, in full pitchman mode. Have no fear: “Nothing says ‘happy holidays’ like donating in Aunt Tilda’s name to build a composting toilet in Haiti.” A sampling of the New York Times columnist’s list of worthy charities follows: Acumen Fund: A fund that invests money in for-profit aid initiatives, reflecting "a growing trend of using business mechanisms to fight poverty." BRAC: A Bangladeshi aid group expanding into Afghanistan and Africa that promotes "education, health, and microfinance" by turning "impoverished women into agents of change." Developments in Literacy: A group that builds modern schools, not madrassas, in Pakistan. "This is a security issue, for DIL schools can help protect us from terrorism." Deworm the World: "One of the most cost-effective ways of getting more children into school appears to be deworming them with one pill a year, for about 50 cents per person reached." Sustainable Health Ventures: "A new effort to help women and girls in poor countries to manage menstruation, so that they miss less school and work." For Kristof's full list, click here.