Georgia Mctaggart started a non-profit company called Help Up. The company employs and partners with homeless people and those in need to clean three historically important and major rivers in Cape Town.

In order to grasp the worth of what Georgia is doing through Help Up, one has to understand the concept of effective altruism.

Simply put effective altruism means effective giving. Giving that makes a significant change.

Assisting those in need by giving them food or money on the streets is a good and charitable thing to do because it relieves the immediate pain of homelessness. But, it is not enough. It is not enough because it does nothing to address the causes of homelessness. If the causes of a problem are tackled, then the problem is likely to end. It’s like having an infected wound on your body. You can take painkillers that will reduce the pain, but if you don’t get antibiotics to fight the infection the pain is likely to come back and the wound will never heal.

Unemployment is one of the major causes of homelessness. The City of Cape Town estimates that there are nearly 5000 homeless people living in the city.

Help Up employs homeless people and they make a living from the work that they do whilst simultaneously saving the environment from the detrimental effects of plastic waste such as ground water pollution and the poisoning of aquatic life.

Before Georgia started cleaning the rivers, one resident of Cape Town by the name Koosie Burger says he would fill 8–12 trash bags with plastic waste every Saturday on lagoon beach. Now he only fills half a bag. The positive results of cleaning these rivers are already being seen.

Help Up’s model can be used as a blueprint to fight destitution and unemployment in other parts of South Africa and beyond the country’s borders.

Help Up needs your support to continue its mission of fighting homelessness, unemployment and pollution. To partner with Help Up you can follow the link to their crowd funding campaign or contact georgia@helpuptoday.co.za.