The London Smile Crew was back in full force in January and on a mission to chase away the January blues with... SMILES! :)
16 of us got together on a Sunday morning to decorate some home-baked cookies and cakes with Love and make some fun smile posters. We had also pre-ordered some SMILE wallet calendars to give out with the goodies -- they had a smile card on one side and a handy 2010 calendar on the other. We then got bundled up and headed off to Hyde Park where we began to spread some smiles and share our goodies with passers-by.
Shawn Ahmed is a college student from Texas, using his iPhone and iMac to make a difference. Take a look at his video journey about bringing water to a village in rural Bangladesh ... it's touching:
There are so many inspiring parts to this: there is Shawn's journey of service that is off to a beautiful start, there is his creative ability to rally support and encourage activism, and there is a bridge-building exercise across cultures. To top it all off, it's real. As his website says, "This is not a charity, organization, or anything formal."
On the other hand, I see the faces of the villagers staring at the iPhone in awe. They don't have clean drinking water, but now they have Shawn, an outside entity that will bring outside resources to rescue the village. It propagates the subtle myth (like Avatar) that the solution is outside, when that is the same outside that is burning up and living unsustainably. Leveraging the 50-rupees-to-a-dollar conversion rate, it‘s easy to engage in short-term service but I wonder about the repercussions to long-term development.
Overall, though, :) I think Clay Shirky is right when he says that publishing is the new literacy. We haven't quite wrapped our heads around that yet. Sure, we upload 20 hours of YouTube videos every minute; sure, it's problematic that more than half of Internet usage is about viewing x-rated content. But a Luddite response isn't going to help. Modern technology is here to stay. We need to figure out how to make best use of it, and we need service hearted people -- like Shawn -- to usher in a new era of possibilities.
I remember telling Madhu, co-founder of MAM Movies, that he can either produce content or become a platform and empower people to publish around the values they cared for. He chose the latter, and with projects like 101 hours, 101 filmmakers and 101 NGOS and She Creates, MAM is now doing the work of new literacy. Consider the story of a Muslim woman in the Dharavi slums, Asia’s largest, who wasn't being given her food ration cards; she silently went to the officers with a camera and just recorded the officers’ responses; within 3 months, they all had their ration cards. That's empowering.
Many years ago, I used to hang out with this "German guy with a nice car" and share some deep conversations about service. It never occured to me that I should ask him about his work life. At a random conversation, a decade later, I learned that he was the founder of Price Club (now Costco).
Being solidly anchored in your values has the perk of drawing people into the same space -- and rest are details that almost don't matter. :)
Since generosity is one of those anchoring values for CharityFocus, I tend to have conversations with people around precisely those small acts of goodness. At a recent meeting with an established entrepreneur, our lunch meeting turned into a story-telling session of some rather remarkable stories ...
In New York, two friends are seated at Arturo's Pizza and they have this crazy idea. They tell their waiter, "We'd like to pay for the whole restaurant, but anonymously." "What?!?" the sensible waiter responds. The restaurant owner comes in. "Sir, I think you've had too much to drink," he concludes. "Look, I need 19-20 drinks before I get drunk. I'm really serious. Tell everyone that someone anonymous paid covered their tab and that they should pay it forward. " It had never happened in their 28 year history. Almost all of a sudden, everyone in the restaurant gets happy; waiters feel like philanthropists, restaurant diners start shelling out incredible tips, and the restaurant owners are still wondering if that man is drunk. :) Sure enough, they paid. When they found out that their pizza wasn't charged, they went back to cover that too. It's unclear how many people were drunk, but everyone was high.
And another one:
At their company, they had couple of summer interns. To teach them about taking initiative, the CEO calls them into their office: "Our company is about spreading good in the world. So in line with the values of our company, go out to the park and do something that's never been before." "Like what?" the interns protested. "Whatever you want." "Anything?" Yes, anything." "How much can we spend?" "Any amount." "ANY amount? " "Yeah, if it's $3 million, I will write you a check for $3 million." And the CEO was serious. The college interns thought and thought and re-thought. "What could they do?" Then, they hit up a local park with a "Penny For Your Thoughts" poster and created a collage of positive thoughts that random passerby's contributed. And they ultimately donated the collage to a local homeless shelter. It cost $143 in all, but the interns will never forget that experience. :)
Couple days later, I was hanging out with Ashish, and I get an email with "oh my god" as the subject line and "call me now" as the text. It was the same friend, calling to tell me this remarkable story:
On the streets of Downtown Mountain View, he runs into his college friend whom he hasn't seen in years. "AJ?!?" "It's been so long!" As they start to shake hands, his friend holds out a little card. "Someone just paid for my coffee and gave me this Smile Card," and excitedly starts to explain the pay-it-forward concept. "Man, I know all about Smile Cards -- I know the people that started it! Who gave you the card?" "That woman right there. She paid for my coffee and gave me the card." Immediately, he runs up to her and asks, "M'aam, who gave you these Smile Cards?" "Well, there was a guy in front of me who paid for my coffee and handed me a Smile Card. Then, he gave me $60 and this stack of Smile Cards, and asked me to pay forward for all the people in the line!" He couldn't believe it. :)
It's not that everyone is all about giving all the time. But as we sincerely try to be the change we wish to see, it attracts those little strands from each person's journey and pretty soon, our lives are full of values we cherish.
Paul recently moderated a panel at AHIMSA's event (with Huston Smith!) and his badge mentioned KarmaTube.org :) ... Trishna's CF journey has been nominated for profiling in More-Than-Me book by Kelly Eldredge ... Aumatma is speaking on an Economics of Peace conference call representing Karma Clinic and CF ... Jenny's is working with Bob Eckert, who wants to use his company's webinars to highlight CF ... Pavi will soon share Karma Kitchen/CF stories on Caroline Casey's KPFA radio show that reaches 100K listeners ... Birju rocked the house at a Parabola gathering in NY ... Rohit Chandra asked Somik to speak about CF on his radio show ... in London, Aditi is set to represent Smile Cards on BBC ... Bhoutik is going on a radio show for DailyGood ... Sam spoke at Stanford's Social M gathering on sustainability ...
Surely, this is just a random sampling because I know glossing over bunch of other activity.
Setting down his burrito, he leaned across the table and, looking me in the eye, said, “Richard, how can I serve you?” This caught me off guard. Not that I was especially on guard. It’s just that no one had ever said that to me before. And I’d only met this man twenty minutes earlier. But I’d heard about him, and from a very good source, stories so intriguing that finally I’d said, “Paul, I’d love to meet this guy!” And now here we were, the three of us, having lunch at a taqueria in Berkeley. We were all in high spirits.
What takes place in the lively territory of psychic exchange — very lively, in this case — can be so much more than meets the eye. Later on, when I tried to explain what had happened to some of my friends, they were cautionary. They looked at me with some alarm. You’re going to do what? Give your magazine away?
Let me backtrack…
I’d been struggling with an art magazine I’d founded, works & conversations. I’d tried many of the suggestions I’d be given, but nothing much had come of it. There was always a shortage of money and sometimes, when I’d get depressed, a shortage of energy. But each time I felt like giving up, some new gift appeared. One day I got a subscription from Harvard, an actual check from the Fogg Museum! That kept my spirits up for quite awhile. All along gifts mysteriously seemed to be parceled out just at the right times. And they came in many different forms, all except in the form of dollars.
By the time I met Nipun at the taqueria that Sunday afternoon, I’d been at it for fifteen years. When he asked how he could serve me, I just laughed. It was a laugh of gratitude and delight, and of not knowing how to respond.
Then he said, “I’m serious.” And added, “What you’re doing is a gift and you should be giving it away.”
That stopped me. What I was doing was a gift. I should be giving it away.
I’d been struggling with an art magazine I’d founded, 
Feb 05: Jennifer on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 28: Paula Tomsett on Paul Hawken's Commencement Address in Portland
Jan 27: Madhu on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 26: Nitul on One Straw Revolution of Masanobu Fukuoka
Jan 25: Ramanand Kowta on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 24: sheela on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 24: Jill on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 24: Maureen Sheridan on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 23: Allie on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy
Jan 23: Rational on Mother Teresa on Gift Economy