One way for a community to help in the third world is to become a
community partner with a community in a poor country. The funds you
raise are used by a non governmental organization that has experience
working in that country to help that specific community. The idea is
to have personal and community exchanges with your sister community.
An example of how this works can be found at
http://www.manly-manado.org.
The community Manly, Austalia has a community partnership with Manado,
Indonesia.
I hope to get my community to organze a partnership with a community
in Haiti through Partners in Health, which is a first rate ngo.