From public health to humane education, ACTAsia’s Pei Su explains why long-term impact lies in prevention - and why funders and policymakers must catch up.
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When most people think of charitable work, they picture emergency aid - disaster relief, food banks, shelters and medical interventions. These charities focusing on cure are undeniably essential, but there's a quieter, often underfunded side of the nonprofit world: charities that focus on prevention.

Prevention isn’t flashy, it isn’t ‘sexy’ and it doesn’t usually hit the headlines or deliver the kind of instant gratification of immediate, tangible results that donors and the general public like to see. But in many cases, it’s where the real long-term impact lies. Preventive charities work behind the scenes to stop crises before they start.

Take public health, it's far more cost-effective to prevent a disease than to treat it. According to the World Health Organization, every dollar spent on immunisation returns an estimated $44 in economic benefits.

Equally, if we consider education-based charities, whose work helps to nurture a more empathetic generation, the impact is huge. ACTAsia is a charity I set up nearly 20 years ago, and our education programmes promote the importance of caring for each other, animals and the environment. As a result I can proudly say it is helping to reduce human violence, animal cruelty and prevent climate change. Long-term societal benefits such as these are the real superpower of preventative work.

But despite their proven value, prevention-focused charities often struggle to attract funding. Reactive aid is prioritised over proactive change because the successes of the latter are often invisible. It’s hard to measure the diseases that didn’t spread, the lives that weren’t ruined, or the pandemics that never happened. Donors are naturally drawn to visible and concrete outcomes and not abstract probabilities. Societal change is not a ‘quick fix’ and addressing the root cause of the issues is essential. I often liken it to preventing a fire starting, as opposed to working to extinguish it once lit.

This is why education is at the heart of ACTAsia’s work, with the different strands of our Compassion for Life programme focused on educating children, consumers and professionals in Asian societies to help build a kinder and more sustainable world.

ACTAsia’s Caring for Life (CFL) education for children aims to help Asian children, aged between 6 and 12 years old, to develop a sense of compassion and responsibility for animals, people and the environment. Humane education which is often referred to as PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic) is widely taught in the west but is not taught in Asian schools. Taught over six years and based on UNESCO’s Four Pillars of Education, the curriculum encompasses social welfare and citizenship, animal welfare and environmental issues.

ACTAsia’s CFL education for consumers focuses on raising awareness surrounding the exploitation of animals, people and the environment in production methods for consumer related items. We work tirelessly to educate others about the threat of fur farming to human and animal health.

And our CFL education for professionals offers training and professional development to influential community members such as teachers, lawyers, doctors, officials, journalists and veterinarians.

If we want to create a more effective, sustainable non-profit sector, we need to shift our collective mindset: prevention and being proactive is not boring, it’s bold, it’s strategic, and it works. Stop waiting to stick a plaster over the injury – prevent it appearing in the first place.

I believe charities that invest in preventative measures deserve more recognition and support. By funding them, we’re not just alleviating suffering, we're building systems that reduce suffering before it begins, and that kind of forward-thinking approach is becoming ever more essential in the modern world.

In the end, the best charity work is the kind you never hear about—because the problem never happened. That’s the quiet power of prevention.

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