Annabelle - 

Donation is a wonderful thing. A perfect world, every cent of the dollar and you donate will go straight to the cause you help to support but, in the real world up to 54% of the dollar is taken to go to the corporation to support funding. They can also go to  advertisements and funding of the employees so they can do the best work possible. When I heard this information, I was shocked the fact that 50% of my dollar and all of that I chose to Donate wasn't necessarily going to go to the people I want to help with was hard to hear. But, don't let that discourage you from donating.  The point of a project to help educate others do their research before making their donations. There are many many small corporations or organizations that have less of an overhead such as 9% or even less. These are the organizations that as the people we should support. I understand that the UNHCR is more accessible, but I want to educate people to look harder. 

Our goal of this project was to create a visual representation that is interactive prove a point. The point is when you donate please research the foundations and organizations that you are donating two, have some of them are less helpful than others. Madeline and I  created A game type piece of art. There are two rectangles one of which represents the bigger organization. The rectangle is bigger but has bigger traps in it so when you put your money in the top and the sides down between the different pegs, your money may get stuck and be gone forever. The money that reaches the bottom box goes to donation of the money get stuff will go to the corporation. On the other side there is a smaller box yes this box maybe smaller but there is only one trap that the coin have to avoid the trap taking about 9% to coins. The smaller box is a more reliable route. Please designs will be installed onto the streets of Cambridge for others to use educate themselves. Again, we want to make it clear that we are not discouraging those to donate yet we are encouraging those to do their research before they do.

Madeline - 

Donating it a great and important thing. You get to help people in need around the world. But do you know where your money is actually going? In the studio, Transferring Narratives, we Skyped with many different people who are experiencing the refugee crisis first hand. We talked with people who ran refugee camps, helped refugees seek asylum, and refugees themselves. My partner Annabelle and I wanted to focus on the aspect of donating blindly. After doing some research and talking with the head of a foundation, we learned that there is a lot of waste when it comes to donations. Big corporations like the UNHCR wastes a lot of money when it comes to their volunteers and overhead costs. There are many little organizations that do the same great work as big corporations like the UNHCR but you are guaranteed that most of your money is going to the refugees, not into wasteful things or worse, some ones pocket. We learned that 54% of the money that you donate to big corporations goes to overhead costs and wasteful spending, whereas only 9% of the money you donate to smaller organizations goes to overhead costs. To visually represent this research, Annabelle and I created two rectangle shaped peg boards made out of acrylic and wood. The two rectangles are different sizes; the small representing little organizations and the big representing big foundations. The only thing connecting these two boxes is a large bin at the bottom which will represent the money going to charity. In the bigger rectangle, we put boxes and other obstacles to make it that only half of your money makes it into the charity bin. In the smaller rectangle there is only one obstacle stopping the money from getting into the bin. This shows that you never really know where you money is going to the corporation or to aid. Annabelle and I are not trying to discourage people from donating, we want people to do research and really know where their money goes when they donate.