

A dose of perspective - gracegarey
http://exposure.watsi.org/a-dose-of-perspective

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daeken
For those who don't know (like me, up until a few minutes ago), Watsi has a
feature to allow monthly automatic donations:
[https://watsi.org/monthly](https://watsi.org/monthly)

Currently only 84 people are signed up for it -- let's see how far up we can
get that.

Edit: Up to 90 in an hour! That's just pure awesome.

~~~
abstractbill
Nice, I had stopped donating for a few months because apparently I'm _that_
lazy ;) Just signed up for monthly donations - I'm #87.

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qeorge
#89 here, let's keep it going!

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natch
Awesome, gave me a great glimpse of something, I'm not sure what you guys are,
but it looks cool.

Web usability suggestion: Click as I might, I could not find a link anywhere
to the Watsi home page. Call me lazy, but I still have not visited it. If
there was a link to it I might have clicked on it and gone there.

~~~
aidos
In the hopes that you'll get involved [https://watsi.org/](https://watsi.org/)
:)

Watsi is a wonderful glimmer of hope. I don't particularly have the money for
it, but I've made 4 donations over the last couple of weeks. It's easy, you
just read the stories and think to yourself, "do I really need to buy that
coffee this week?"

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sage_joch
This post does a great job of showing a simple truth that many people forget:
when you genuinely help a person, you are also helping everyone in that
person's "sphere". There is a kind of exponential echoing effect when you are
good-to.

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rememberlenny
This was absolutely beautiful.

Highlighting: FOOTNOTES: PS - We're hiring a senior full-stack engineer. Email
chase@watsi.org for more info.

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pudo
I'm not entirely sure that as a patient in one of these hospitals, I'd
appreciate the (white) girl with a camera strapped to her forehead walking
through the place.

Trading patient privacy for donations seems like a worse deal than needs to be
made here.

~~~
gracegarey
Grace from Watsi here. I totally understand where you're coming from based on
how the post is written - our fault for being hyperbolic. Of course, we would
never walk through a hospital and record people without their explicit
permission.

Patient privacy is something we take really seriously. It is so important to
us that Watsi funds cases regardless of whether or not the patient wants to
publicly share their story with the world ([https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-
watsi-handle-patient-privacy](https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle-
patient-privacy)) so that patients are never trading privacy for access to
healthcare. More info here: [http://blog.watsi.org/post/62445601517/patient-
privacy](http://blog.watsi.org/post/62445601517/patient-privacy)

That said, what I've learned after talking with dozens of Watsi patients is
that the overwhelming majority of them feel compelled to share their stories.
They hope it will enable more people to access the healthcare they deserve.

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danielweber
Maybe it's my browser but I only see a picture, no story.

Or is it the picture that's cool?

~~~
bittercynic
Had to allow javascript from d1dh4fomm3d62b.cloudfront.net for the page to
work.

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wiwillia
It's always amazing to see people travel the world and make an impact. It's
easy to be hyper-focused on growth metrics and silicon valley that you can
lose sight of the bigger picture.

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Goopplesoft
Why doesn't Watsi open source its code so developers can donate their time?

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gohrt
because the website is a trivial part of the operation, and coding it is
easier than coordinating drop-in volunteers?

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Goopplesoft
Is that a question or a statement?

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danvoell
Pretty slick storytelling design. Anyone know if this blog is built on top of
something (medium/wordpress) or is it custom?

~~~
gracegarey
Thanks! We used [https://exposure.so/](https://exposure.so/).

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leandrod
From Conkeror I cannot find any text, only a photogram.

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jayzee
just got an error while trying to sign up for a monthly donation

~~~
gracegarey
Yikes, sorry to hear that. What was the error message? Feel free to email me -
grace at watsi dot org - and we'll sort it out.

Thanks for wanting to sign up!

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jackmaney
I immediately stopped reading upon the first sentence: "Our trip started with
a RTY (Read This Yo) Level 1,000 text."

Look, I like RPGs as much as the next nerd, but there's no reason to
purposefully obfuscate what you're trying to say by needlessly throwing in
garbage like this.

And "Read This Yo"? Seriously?

~~~
benaiah
I immediately stopped reading this post about a fucking medical charity
serving poor people in Africa to nitpick on a tiny stylistic choice that
mildly confused me for about a quarter of a second while sitting in my air
conditioned SF office sipping a cappucino so that other well-to-do Western
assholes would give me invisible Internet points...

Oh, no, I didn't. That was you (with some leeway to artistic representation).
Out of everything there, this is what you wanted to talk about?

EDIT: The title of this post is "A dose of perspective". Think about that for
a sec.

~~~
jackmaney
Never been to SF, I'm not sitting in an office, and I'm not drinking a
cappuccino.

Nice try.

In all seriousness, though, I had no idea what Watsi is. This was their chance
to tell me about themselves. They blew it.

~~~
benaiah
Like I said, artistic license taken with the caricature. Hyperbole is the soul
of wit, etc.

The benefit of HN over other similar sites that shall remain nameless is a
very high signal-to-noise ratio - the community tends to have interesting,
meaningful, detailed conversations about specific topics. Your post was
precisely the opposite of that, and it's a perfect example of this community's
biggest problem, one which those of us who enjoy the community here try to
combat: a pervading, cynical, nitpicking negativity, often about things
completely tangential to the actual topic of discussion, that adds nothing to
the conversation and serves only as a way to smugly imply how much
smarter/more cultured/less douchey (the irony!) than whoever put together the
link.

That's noise, not signal. It contributes nothing. Feel free to make your snide
comments to yourself, but please don't bring down the quality of discussion
here by using this forum to show off your nitpicking skill. If you don't feel
like reading the article, then don't take over the conversation about the
article with your reasons for not reading it.

I apologize for my overly heated language in my initial - I don't have
anything against you personally, and my caricature was more harsh than
deserved.

~~~
jackmaney
Let's get one thing straight: I'll comment when I please and on whatever
article I please, and there's nothing that you can do about it. Do I make
myself clear?

Now, having said that, I did take a closer look at Watsi, and decided to be
their 109th monthly donor. Of course, I'm just another well-to-do Western
asshole, so I'm sure you'll downvote this post, too.

~~~
abbasmehdi
"when I please and on whatever article I please"

I don't think the grandparent was asking you to stay within a time or quantity
constraint. His/her point was about the quality of your comment, which this
forum has pretty hard-defined guidelines for [1].

I think you made a valid point in your first comment here (and I thought your
feedback was valuable), but you added some unnecessary rudeness. Imagine if
you met Grace at a party and she excitedly tells you what she does. Then she
whips out her phone and shows you the posted page. You catch the issue you
pointed out (which in my mind is a legitimate point of concern), how would you
bring it to her attention? If you imagine that scenario and compare it to your
original comment then it might make more sense. At least that is how I try to
think about it. I hope you find it helpful and thanks for adding yourself to
the list of monthly donors [2].

[1]
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[2] I am not affiliated with Watsi in any way except I am starting to donate
very small amounts.

