One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee. Around the world, someone is displaced every three seconds, forced from their homes by violence, war and persecution. This, according to the UN.

Ban Ki-moon, the former UN secretary general, once described the global refugee crisis as "not just a crisis of numbers," but "a crisis of solidarity."

Solidarity hinges on support. If a group of people show solidarity, they show support for each other or for another. The special few provide hands-on support. Most don’t have the skill, or the selflessness to do this, but we can still do something. It can be as simple, and easy, as giving away money to a cause. But this involves overcoming a huge fear, which is having less money. If you do overcome this, then which cause do you choose?

I think effective altruism is the way to go. It combines empathy with evidence. The focus is the word effective. It sets out to answer the question: how can we use our resources to help others the most? It uses evidence and analysis to find out.

There are other communities and organizations that set out to measure effectiveness too, such as GiveWell.org. There are people who live by their values, calculating how much they can live on, and donating the rest, others deliberately go into careers that pay very high salaries in order to employ people on the ground doing charitable work that is effective. They are being their most effective, by multiplying their effect.

Read the full article about supporting the refugee cause through effective altruism by Nima Abu Wardeh at The National.