What is the Busking Challenge?

The Busking Challenge aims to harness the power of street music to support some of the most effective charities working to relieve suffering and save lives in the neediest parts of the world. It takes its inspiration from the Effective Altruism movement,

 

One of these exceptional charities is the Fistula Foundation whose mission is to heal women suffering from obstetric fistula. Obstetric fistula is a horrific injury that occurs commonly in poorer parts of the world where women have to give birth without proper medical care. When labour is obstructed and there are no resources to perform a Caesarean section, a woman can lie in agony for days. If she survives - and her baby often does not - she is left with a gaping hole in her lower body through which urine and faeces leak continually. As though they had not already suffered enough, these women are often shunned by their husbands and communities, because their incontinence is a source of disgust.

 

But fistula can be repaired via surgery for a cost of only about 600 Euros per woman. This simple, inexpensive operation spares young women a life of pain, degradation and social exclusion – it quite literally gives them their lives back.