This is from the Avaaz group. I receive e mails from the Avaaz Organization every two weeks or so. I sign their petitions, and hope for the best. This particular e mail got me pissed off before the New Year rolls in. I'll keep my diary to three of the most egregious paragraphs here for you, and I encourage you to follow the link. Happy New Year, and let's continue the good fight! Peace.
This holiday season, Josh, a Kenyan student in the Netherlands, scraped together a year's worth of savings and sent it home to support 10 struggling family members. Shockingly, the giant money transfer company Western Union skimmed off 20% of the cash meant for Josh's family in fees.
Josh’s story is painfully retold every day, the world over, on a staggering scale -- an estimated $44.3 billion worldwide was lost in transfer fees last year! The World Bank recommends that transaction costs not exceed 5% of the total, but Western Union has never faced serious pressure to lower its crippling charges. If we unite in a global outcry now, we can expose its predatory practices when its carefully crafted, family-friendly image is most vulnerable: the giving season.
Sacrifices like Josh’s dwarf foreign governmental aid every year and provide a vital lifeline to the world’s poorest economies. Slashing the obscene profits of companies like Western Union would dramatically increase assistance flowing into developing countries. Instead, families around the world received far less than they deserved so that Western Union's CEO could take home $8.1 million in 2009.
Links:https://secure.avaaz.org/en/make_giving_powerful/?vl
**Luis Morago from Avaaz is the author of this particular e- mail.