Perhaps the best kind of charity lies in making someone able to help themselves. That is to say, if your charity does something that makes a person stand on their own feet, that is much better than buying them a pair of crutches. Props that your money creates for the needy may go away, but if you can teach them independence and the means to it, that is the best charity.
With that idea in mind, it is easy to recognize that the best kinds of charity and service one can offer the poor of this world is to educate them. Give them such education that will enable them to become financially self dependent. It may be necessary, along the way, to support them fully for a short term, but the long term goal is always going to be education, of the sort that lets them earn their own livelihood.
While standard, school going education is okay for children and those who have people to support themselves already, those who need something to procure their own immediate sustenance need a different sort of education. In this, one needs to figure out some aspect in that person’s prior training or life history which tells one what the person has a potential for. Suppose there is a poor person in a third world country who has, by virtue of living with Christina missionaries, has learned excellent spoken English, but is otherwise illiterate. So, there is something that this person can do that many others cannot – speak the world’s lingua franca fluently. It is easily seen that the best way to make this person trained in a income producing education is to bolster his already present asset – English fluency. Once thta is done, he or she can get a job as an interpreter, or in a call center, or even , if there is a natural acumen, take on a managing position in some endeavor.