Summer of Social Good

"You're in my Top 8!"

"Are you on Facebook?"

"Didn't you get my txt message?"

Twitter = mass txt messaging that can be searched

I'd rather randomly see someone from elementary school on the street than have them "find" me. I don't have text messaging on my phone and I enjoy how appalled people are that I don't. I tell them to just call me. How novel.

Call me jaded. Call me cynical. Tell me I take it all way too seriously. Whatever.

What's more interesting than my shattitude as a non-user, is the potential of the millions of people that do use these social networks. Take Mashable's Summer of Social Good, for instance. Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter benefiting the likes of The Humane Society, Oxfam, World Wildlife Fund, and Livestrong. The power of sharing meets the power of giving.

$3571 raised so far

63 days

1535 hours

92142 minutes

5528521 seconds till the end of summer

RT that!

"i forgot how much i like pickles!"

postscript: Steven Johnson wrote an amazing article in Time about Twitter. Read it. Almost made me want to create an account. Almost. :)

Spirit of Adventure

I went to see Up the other night in 3D.  The first 5-10 minutes are done without any dialogue.  Carl meets Ellie as little adventurers and they show the progression of their love together.  This isn't The Notebook where you're sobbing hysterically at the end of the movie.  Those first 10 minutes destroyed any hopes of mascara staying on my face and the emotional smorgasbord continues throughout.  My favorite Pixar movie to date. 

Director Pete Docter intended for audiences to take a specific point from the film, saying:

Basically, the message of the film is that the real adventure of life is the relationship we have with other people, and it's so easy to lose sight of the things we have and the people that are around us until they're gone. More often than not I don't really realize how lucky I was to have known someone until they're either moved or passed away. So if you can kind of wake up a little bit and go, "Wow, I've got some really cool stuff around me every day", then that's what the movie's about.

What a nice swift kick in the ass to remember that there are no real happy ever afters in life because there are no real finish lines. My life is one gigantic adventure. I have no idea what's going to happen or where it'll take me and that is so damn exciting. 

brand exposure: globalgiving

interested in how i'm finding the organizations i'm writing about?  sure you are.

who: globalgiving

where on the internet:  globalgiving.com 

when:  thursday at work

how:  i told my coworker about plum-valley and he said i should definitely check out mashable. turns out that they are hosting a Summer of Social Good. which, in and of itself, is so awesome it will get its own entry later :)  one of the partners for the event was globalgiving.  i'd never heard of them before and their involvement in this event gave me enough motivation to click the link.

so what:  this turned out to be one of those serendipitous things in life. one of the first things i do when i go to a site like this is visit their about me link. before i get caught up in your website's bells and whistles (or lack there of), i want to know what your mission is and who's on your team. 

1. the bells and whistles are there and they are fantastic. clean layout. navigation is a breeze. the tone of the site doesn't have that sally struthers gut-wrenching effect either. very up-beat and dare i say, cute. 

2. Vision:  Unleash the potential of people around the world to make positive change happen.

    Mission:  Build an efficient, open, thriving marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them.

3. professor harrison's strategic planning course made me care a lot about who a company entrusts to accomplish their mission. check out their bios and list of partners. it reads like the Dream Team that went to Barcelona in 1992. seriously. 

watch the one minute video to see how globalgiving works.

honolulu habitat for humanity

habitat for humanity is one of those top of mind organizations. and even though i've yet to work with them, the degrees of separation between myself and habitat are very few.  nicola, my good friend from college went to zambia and costa rica with habitat and one of my best friends, chandra, has worked with them through her church. 

my birthday is fast approaching and i thought i'd organize an adopt-a-day with honolulu's habitat chapter.  volunteering nirvana would be something like having a date in mind, committing to being there, intrinsic value in exchange for your help. win-win in my book. this was not my experience today.  on their website, honoluluhabitat.org gives the break out of the "cost" to volunteer.  $25 per person, $500-1K per team (with varying perks) or build-a-thon for $5K.  when i started working on dates with them, i was sent forms that were not the same listed on the website. the updated forms require $75 per person or $1K-2K per team.  the 300% increase raised my eyebrows.  there is apparently a monetary threshold at which my brain/instincts say, "that's reasonable" or "really?!" and when i did ask why there was such a dramatic increase, the answer was "since inception no one ever thought to increase the cost. and since this is a huge source of revenue for us, it makes sense." 

i fully appreciate the fact that while organizations like habitat are for not-for-profit, they still need to generate funds somehow to function (and thrive).  i'm not bucking at the idea of making donations. what disheartened me was that by upping the ante to $75, its not very feasible for the average person.  15 of my friends were willing to donate $25, give up a saturday from 8am - 4pm, and were excited to hammer/saw/spackle a house in waimanalo. forking over another $50 on top of that would be me asking them to sacrifice something else out of their recession-thrashed budgets. 

habitat is working incredibly hard to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world. that is not up for debate here. what i do want to challenge is the knee-jerk tendency to default to larger organizations.  in this instance, $75 would likely go toward supplies and overhead costs. OR i could volunteer somewhere for (gasp) free and give my $75 directly towards a propane stove for AIDS orphans in India.

either choice moves me toward my goal of making positive change in the world. another win-win. gotta love that. i plan to work with habitat in the future, but for now, for this birthday anyway, there are many other cause-worthy fish in the proverbial sea. 

the idea

i work full time.

i'm getting my MBA.

i have a life.  ;) 

i have a mortgage.

i have car payments.

money and time. not something i have a lot of. 

i want to do service projects domestically and internationally.

there are incredible organizations out there that deserve exposure and need my/your/our help.

this is my effort to not be a sayer or even a check-writer.

i want to prove (to myself and others) that even without money and time to burn, IT CAN BE DONE.

i'll do the research, the fundraising, the planning, the trip.

candid, raw, and as sans bullshit as possible.

i'll show you how i did it, in the hopes that you will do the same.

all you need to do is stay tuned :)