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Hello everyone, my name is Ami, good morning in the US Buenos Dias, in Chile, in Argentina.
I’m going to take a second to talk about what we’re actually going to do here today.
Um I’m going to take a little bit of time to take a presentation. We’re going to share
our ideas and our vision with you and see what you think.
Those of you who are not familiar we started in 95 and um since then 90,000 organizations
around the world have joined us. And they use the site to share their resources, their
programs, their opportunities with about a million people every month. So that’s what
idealist has been so far.
Now, I started Idealist in 95 because ever since I was a little kid growing up in Mexico
and that’s me and my sister probably at 5 or 4 years old. I sort of became
Obsessed I think and I know it’s a weird thing to say, but an eight year old who becomes
obsessed with this idea. That we have so much in the world, I don’t understand why we
at home had food and a bed and clothes and why I would see kids in the street that didn’t.
and that sort of became, I sort of think, I think in hindsight I was 7 or 8 years old
I was this little social justice freak. That like keep asking his parents everyday, why,
why do we have and they don’t? Why is this? I remember, very clearly I think my first
little strong experience with this. I must have been, again 7 or 8 years, um we were
out driving at night. One night it was raining really hard, it was dark out and at some point
my father stopped on a traffic light and those days there were lots of children, ah begging
in the traffic lights, ah in Mexico it’s sort of normal. And we couldn’t see a thing,
I couldn’t see a thing it was dark and rainy and at some point, and out of nowhere this
child comes who’s sort of my age. He’s 7 or 8 years old and he comes in and he’s
basically sort an inch from my face out the window of the car. And he’s looking at me,
he puts his hand on the window and he wants me to help him. And I’m 8 years old, he’s
8 years old, what am I supposed to do? But that sense of impotence, that sort of completely
stayed with me. The sense that I wanted to do something and I couldn’t and so I kept
asking about and sort of beginning to be really thinking about why is this. And that’s stayed
with me my whole um life.
And I think it’s the sense that many many of us have, today certainly, you know 40 years
later or more, I’m not going to date myself. 40 years late or more It’s not just non-profit
people, good will, technology. We clearly have so much and yet you get up in the morning,
you walk down the street, or you read the paper And you’re like really this is going
on still in 2014 and you look at stuff like this and with everything we have we can’t
do more?
And I think certainly as a child I was like is this really all we can do? Sometimes I
would even sort of think or I think still now, you know, somebody coming from space
and landing here and looking at everything we have and thinking, are you guys that lame
really? With everything you have, you can’t solve that problem. And so I think what many
of us think is this all we can do and we say no, you know? Of course we can do more.
But then you grow up your heart says we can do more
And your brain starts saying well, you know, it’s complicated and not just in the facebook
sense. It’s complicated for all kinds of sort of reasons.
And there are good reasons why it’s complicated. First of all there are just lots and lots
of us. Right? We are 7 billion people. It’s a big
complicated world. Hundreds, you know thousands, and millions of organizations, government
agencies, just lots and lots of people.
Then when we say we want a better world, a better community, we in fact mean many many
different things right?
So you want less poverty, she wants more whales, I want better schools. So a better world means
thousands of things, multiplied by billions of people. Then add another layer
For each of those things we in fact mean completely different things, so you say that you want
cleaner air and your Imagining a forest. She’s imagining, you know, wind turbines. You say
better schools and you say better schools and maybe you actually mean completely contradictory
things.
And then to add on top of all that we love our independence right? We talk, all of us
talk about collaboration, cooperation, and it sounds great we love doing our own thing.
Many of us, I mean it’s nice to collaborate if it’s possible, we actually love doing
our own thing constantly. So that sort of makes sense to you guys, you’re good with
this so far? Then add on top of that I think the biggest issue here, which is really
why we’re here today.
Is that we don’t have a shared goal and this is really really critical. Right, when
human beings have a shared goal they can do amazing stuff. We live, I think, in sort of
a pessimistic times, we sort of don’t have a big faith in what we can do, but human beings,
you know think about any big airport. Think about a big hospital; think about, you know
the European Train System. We can build amazing things. We can go to the moon; human beings
can do amazing stuff if they have a shared goal. But when we think about a better world,
a better community what does that mean? What’s an actionable goal there? And the weird thing
is that even just looking around this room or looking at the people that signed up all
over the world. We feel we have something in common, but if we don’t put that in words
how can we act about that. Right? And so having a goal that is actionable is critical? You
think if you look on Wikipedia right? You’ve used Wikipedia right? It’s one thing to
say, oh knowledge is important great. It’s another thing to say lets build a freaking
encyclopedia that anyone can use and edit. That’s a goal and once you have goal, thousands
of people are going to work on that goal. But we don’t have a goal like that. And
it’s really difficult to create one, if we think together how do we actually come
up with such a goal. Now, like what’s a good Portland. What’s a good world? I don’t
know, you could probably say well lets all be nice to each other or lets be kinder. Ok,
how do you build a movement around that? Or we can fall into another trap, which is start
writing bullets on the wall: I believe in this, we shouldn’t do that, we should do
this. I don’t want to give examples deliberately. And so put up all the bullets of all the things
you really believe in, every single one. IN the end people will agree really strongly
with yourself and nobody else will be there right? Because every bullet you have, you
lose a whole bunch of people.
We believe that in fact there are 3 challenges all over the world that cut across every community
and across every issue that we can agree on and we can build a movement around. Okay?
And those three challenges are:
Number one we believe There is a big gap out there I think and I think all of us tend to
agree between the intentions that we all have to do good in the world. Like you said earlier
you want to volunteer, but don’t really know where to start. Like there’s people
have intentions, we feel we like to do something and for all kinds of reasons we don’t and
we’ll talk about that more in a second.
Second thing that I think we all have in common is that are problems today around the world
are all connected and we know that right now. Right, it’s 2014 we know that poverty and
corruption, alcoholism, and bad governments. These things are all connected; we are not
connected as we think. It’s really these like, not clickers, but we have cell phones
and this kind of stuff now and we think, oh my god we’re on facebook, I know everyone.
And it’s amazing; most of us have no idea who lives two floors above us or one block
away and certainly not what they’re thinking. And so all of this technology is coming into
our lives and we still don’t know what somebody a block away is thinking right now and what
they might want to do with them. We’re actually not as connected as we think.
And lastly the wonderful ideas that have been implemented in one place, but there’s no
big marketing budget behind them. So they don’t flow.
So imagine somewhere in the world there’s a house, there’s a building, there’s an
apartment building of some sort and there are two people who live in that house and
they’re looking out their windows and they’re seeing an empty yard below.
And what they’re seeing basically is an empty yard that they would love to turn into
a Garden. So this is really easy to imagine
happening right now wherever you are. Imagine someone on the 13th floor, 4th floor looking
out at the same thing. And imagining something similar that they would like to do. How would
you ever know? Maybe you’re lucky and your building has a bulletin board or some kind
of mailing list. Most actually don’t, many people meet in some pub or coffee shop. You
wouldn’t know and turns out it’s really really important to know, right? Because some
of us have the kind of personality where we will go and alone do something. I don’t,
I have the personality to get up in the morning and, I mean I do this, but I don’t have
the personality to get up in the morning to get up and leaflet my neighbors and knock
on every door. I’m honestly to shy for that. I’m not gonna go and pester my neighbors.
If a friend was doing it with me, maybe I would. So two people can help each other,
two people can support each other and also, I think this is very important I think for
many of us when we are actually, somebody knocks on our door. Ah when I was 15, 16 years
old I think once I walked into a bookstore and you know, I was 15 and there was this
book that said ah, I think the title was, How to Pick UP Girls Or Something. So I picked
up the book and I opened it and the first thing the book said was, if you want to go
out and pick up girls get a friend first. Get someone else to come with you, girls will
be much more, less suspicious of you if you at least have a friend. You know, you’re
not an axe murderer, at least have one friend that is with you. So get a friend, and I think
that the same thing happens, someone knocks on your door, two neighbors knocking on your
door, seemed less crazy than one. Basically at least you’re together. It’s not a neighborhood
crazy person, two people together knocking on your door. So, two people can build much
more than one, but how would you ever know?
Now nearby you have a non-profit, a community group, that was actually created for this.
They were set up to help people build gardens that are what they want to do. Today you could
Google them, you could find them if you really wanted to. Well how about the reverse, how
would that organization ever know that those two people want to build a garden. They’re
not telepathic they have no way to no anything and they cannot like send a letter to every
person in town saying, would you like to build a garden? So they’re imagining that, nobody
knows. Nearby there’s a school
In that school there’s a teacher. It’s a very specific example we get this kind of
emails almost everyday at idealist. In that teacher there’s a person, there’s a teacher
who has been thinking for years how do I find a project where I can take my whole class
to volunteer one day. Not as easy as it may seem actually to find a good project for 30
kids to show up. If he knew, if that teacher knew that in that neighborhood someone wants
to clean up and build a garden, he would bring his kids. But he doesn’t know, so that doesn’t
happen. Down the block, Sort of add more elements to this, there’s a business that business
might want to do some team building with their employees or they have some equipment that
they could easily donate or they have a truck, but they don’t know, nobody is asking them.
SO that doesn’t happen.
And then again there’s a government here nearby and in that government, those who worked
in government especially in big cities. It’s as isolating as anything else. And so imagine
someone sitting in government in a small office and she has this sort of obsession, she would
love to help people turn empty lots into gardens for tax incentives. She doesn’t really know
who to talk to, who to talk to, she is not a high level employee. Who are the other 10
people across city government who agree with this, who agree with her on this? How would
she ever know? So this connection doesn’t get made ok?
Now lets complicate this a little bit more upstairs there is a woman who is a retired
nurse. She has actually been a training nurse for 20 years; she retired a little while ago.
She knows what she can do; she knows what she can do. Walking into a hospital anywhere
she can turn that place around if they just let her. And she would love to go and volunteer
somewhere and find a place to do that. But she’s been reading about international development,
she doesn’t want to impose. She doesn’t want to show up where she’s not needed,
but clearly she’s needed somewhere. Someone could use her. How do you make that match?
And then lastly I think all of us wherever we are in the world we’ve grown up in situations
where whether because of religion or nationality or ethnicity we’re divided by all kinds
of lines. All kinds of borders right? We’re basically in a situation where our in our
cities, in our countries there are people who are different than us. There is the other
all over the world. And we’re in a place where very often you see a human being walking
towards you and we don’t often see the person anymore. We see a label, I mean lets be honest,
you see somebody coming and it’s that, it’s that label, it’s not really a human being
like us. It gets as bad as that. That, and if you want to cross that boundary, if you
actually want to reach out to someone across that border where do you even start. Where
do you make that initial connection to someone who might be across you also wanting to reach
out? How would you ever know? So we end up in a world that from our point of view right
now sort of looks like this. Yes, of course some of this is going on, but there are also
some of these obviously missed connections, missed intentions, ideas that are not flowing.
If we want to actually do something about it, not just say, because you can say well
that’s nice you know anthropology. What are you going to do about it? So to do something
about it um we want to create this here today. How do you create an actual movement, a network,
an ecosystem to tackle those problems. Okay? We have lots of organizations planting trees,
curing cancer, how do you tackle that? How do you build a movement that will do those
three things. Make it easier for people everywhere to move from Intention to action. Lets find
out what people what to do and them help them do it. Connect people, organizations, and
resources in every, possibly way. And then find those great ideas wherever they are and
spread them as far as they will go. OR if you want to sort of summarize this just in
A movement, a network, that helps people everywhere imagine a better community, a better world,
connect with others who want to do it, and honestly also connect with yourself, with
your own passions. And then act on them and help other people act on those. Okay?
SO how do we do this? The first thing and the and the first sort of interesting answer
these days. Are we do it in every possible way. There’s a thing, this sort of little
um disease in the world right now and it’s not about somebody trying to lose themselves
earlier and they said that they developed apps. So this is not about developing apps.
There’s a little disease in the world right now that if you have you a problem, we’ll
build an app for that. There is no app, one app for changing the world, like this. It’s
not gonna happen.
If you really want to to do this you have to do this in every possible way. right? That
building that we talked about earlier. They could use a bulletin board maybe? Or a mailing
list for the building. You want a great website for this. You also want an app that somebody
can says I’m sitting here, I’m around here in 2014. The phone knows where you are;
you could actually connect with a neighbor. Why not? If you really want to do this, you
have to attack it in multiple ways. So how do you actually start? And that’s what we
actually hear ah tonight?
You start by going out in to the world
Which is what we’re doing right now and people find everyone out there and that’s
our goal for the next few months. Now what would these connectors have in common? Three
things: you can be tall, short, outgoing, shy, it doesn’t matter.
The only things that matter are three really important things
1. This whole picture sparks your imagination. The whole thing. When you look at this you
don’t just see a garden or a nurse or you know, the need to sort of cross across borders.
The whole thing like oh my god we could be doing so much and it could come from a place
of, you know, joy and opportunity and possibility. We can do so much, it can also come from a
place of frustration, like this nurse wants to volunteer abroad right now an airplane
is leaving with an empty seat where she wants to go. Come on! Why can’t that airplane
take her? Like enough already so it can be from that place or it can be from a place
of joy and opportunity and possibility. But this whole thing gets you going.
Second these values that we’re going to point to right now, speak to you. You believe
wherever you are in the world that you want to work with other people and in the spirit
of generosity and respect. That’s really important both, to build a world where all
people can lead free and dignified lives. Not just my people or your people, all people.
And what’ fascinating about this I think, is that every person in the world, every single
one, has in common, they want to be treated with dignity and respect. They want to be
free. The question is are we willing to accord that same thing to others. So looking for
people who are moved by that whole picture and how can resonate with that.
And thirdly, and yeah this is actually the most a little bit counterintuitive one, when
you play this connector role. When you go out into your neighborhood or community or
your school and you say I’d like to help people connect, do, share ideas. When you’re
wearing that hat, when you’re playing that role, you’re willing to put your own personal
agenda aside. And why is that important? And this might seem sort of obvious if you’re
coming from a facilitative point of view. If you’re coming from an activist point
of view, it might be a little bit strange. Like wait a second, I want to change the world
what about my ideas? So if you’re coming as a connector and you’re trying to ask
people what do you want to do? How do you want to help? What’s in your mind? If they
feel you’re trying to impose your ideas on them, they won’t trust you right? So
we’re looking for people who at least, when they’re playing this role are willing to
have the joy of connecting and making stuff happen without the need to impose their agenda
on others. Does more or less make sense? Cool.
So what would connections actually do? What is going to happen and what started already
this morning and this is really why this day was so different for us than any other day
we’ve done this before. Is that beginning this morning if you identify with those three
things: you want to do this, Those values speak to you; you like to actually do this.
We’re looking for people around the world to say that’s me, I actually. You’ve just
defined me; I’ve always felt this way. I would love to do this and I want to do this
for my school, for my hospital, for my city. I want to solve those three problems wherever
I am. And if that’s you what you can do right now today on idealist is you can say
yeah, that’s me. I want to join you guys as a connector and take this on around the
world together.
So if you right now go to, I don’t know if it’s up yet, but there will be soon.
That will say join on the site and when you do that you’ll be able to sort of sign on
as a connector immediately, So first off we like to identify people around
the world that want to do this together ok? Second
Once those people step up and say I’d love to do this, those people can meet. They can
meet simply because doing things together with other people as a team is more fun, more
useful, more productive. You don’t really have to meet, but it’s much more productive
and it’s sort of better, stronger to go and create a team. The second thing that’s
happening today already.
Teams are looking for connectors to work together and support each other to make all of this
happen. So and then what happens, what do we actually do? They meet, they get together
And they ask themselves three questions that correspond to our three goals. And they keep
asking those questions forever.
The first question is obviously what can we do and how can we help other people around
us, everyone around us move from intention to action. How do we do that? In every possible
way that we can think of doing that. Second, how do we better connect people, organizations,
and resources wherever we are? What can we do to make those connections better? Lets
build a bulletin board in that building lets see what we can do about that. And lastly
how do we find great ideas wherever they are and spread them. The answers might be very
very different, but the questions will lead us to interesting answers regardless of where
we are. Okay, when you look at these questions right now they could be a little bit abstract,
so we could make them much more concrete. And to do that the first thing we’ll do
immediately is give people a whole series of ways to create ah possible connections,
actions, etc. basically right now what’s happening all over the world Is that there’s
something in school for an example, to go back to the school example that have an annual
volunteer fair where organizations come and do stuff and then students can get involved.
Some schools have that, most schools around the world honestly have never even heard of
that. Some businesses allow their employees to take a day off to volunteer and maybe even
match a donation that an employee makes. Believe it or not, most businesses have never even
heard of that. Some employees of you know, non-profits, executive directors etc, have
breakfast once a month on Tuesdays, whatever to help each other, support each other. Most
don’t and there are many, many, many such examples of programs that exist or projects
that exist to generate action, collaboration, philanthropy, giving. Is that? You see what
I mean, all of us are familiar I think with one, two, three, eight of those. We suspect
that a couple hundred at least around the world of ways of doing that. Now what happens
with this kind of thing is that you hear about something like this, oh it sounds wonderful
to have a volunteer fair, it would be great to get there for breakfast, a bulletin board
in the building electronic or physical would be awesome. Sounds great, how exactly do I
do it? It’s interesting. As humans we hear about a good idea and ideas aren’t enough.
We want a recipe, you know, you go to someone’s house for dinner, they make a great soufflé
and they say oh you can do it too. No, no, no, how exactly did you do it?
We’re going to share with you an initial set of recipes for things like this. It’s
careful you guys for right here in the room what it says on top is host a volunteer fair
for employees. For example, this is an example that actually happened in Portland recently.
We simply and we’re going to share a bunch of templates and recipes like this and what
you can see on top is it says host a volunteer fair, there’s a summary of that and then
you’ll immediately be able to do a whole bunch of things here. Is one if you want to
actually do this you can say I want to take this on and immediately find other people
locally that want to do it with you and again, it’s easier alone than, it’s easier with
others than it is alone. If you’ve done it, the blue button, I did this, tell us you
did this in the past already and tell us your story and what you learned and help make this
richer for other people and maybe even offer yourself to advice to other people how to
do that? The resources there to share around this and then at the bottom of this, we can’t
see it here. There’s a discussion going on about this recipe, how do we make this
thing better? So that more and more people can use it and make it better and better soufflé
and a better and better dinner. A better volunteer opportunity, a better donation program, a
better pro bono program, somewhere etc etc. okay? So we’re going to share 10, 15 of
those, 20 of those probably in the next 10 days and then ask you guys as all over the
world to send us more. What do you know about? What’s happening in Denmark or Sweden or
Australia or Uganda? That might interest other people in ways of promoting action. Now there
are ideas, remember, these are not ideas for planting a tree or building a garden. They’re
ideas for encouraging action, volunteerism, and collaboration across ideas and across
sectors. Okay?
So, there’s a huge advantage in doing this globally. You could say well do this somewhere,
have one person start somewhere. Have one person start somewhere. The idea basically
of going here and saying lets all do this together. There are three big advantages that
we hope to see. One, if you’ve been thinking for a while it would be wonderful to have
a bulletin board in my building or we should have a donation matching program at work.
And you suddenly know that 100’s of people around the world are doing it too, you will
feel inspired and sort of propelled to maybe finally do it. Especially if you can find
someone to do it with you. So that’s number one, number two, what I just referred to the
moment that you put this out in the world and you put out a call that says send us every
possible idea like this we’ll increase that menu and find everything we can. And thirdly
which I think is sort of a more subtle thing when you need to convince someone, a position
of authority to let you do something like this, you know a principal, a boss, you go
to your boss and you say; we should do X and she says well I don’t know, and you say
you know it’s happening all over the world. You don’t want to be the last company not
to do this. She might listen better than if you didn’t say that. So those are the big
advantages of doing it this way, ok? So where are we
Ah now? We’re are in a situation where we said we’re looking for people all over the
world who share these goals of more action, more connection, more ideas all over the world.
We want to find people who, in addition to sharing that, also agree around freedom, dignity,
respect and generosity. Those people can then are invited to join us and join each other
as connectors and work together on this. Those connectors can then meet if they want and
create teams locally, teams of connectors that can do this much better and have this
whole series of tools and tactics that can help them do this work better and better and
you can imagine a situation where this then propels forward because the moment that we
have this, we can get more tools, more tactics, more teams, more inspiration. So the whole
thing just start rolling and you can get more and more of this. If this makes sense to you,
you can go and become a connector now and that’s great. I think if all we were doing
today was just that it wouldn’t be a bad thing, I think it would be a pretty good thing.
But we can do much more than that, because when teams get together they talk about how
do we generate more action for everyone. Right? They’re neutral. Like we said earlier, the
whole conversation is around, how do we make it possible for more people to do more. But
what about the people who want to talk about lets build a garden or lets start a campaign
against or for X, what about those people? What do they go?
So to answer that question we can actually do more and go actually a little deeper than
this. Lets go back for a second to our original
picture here, those two people want to build a garden, but they don’t know, that thought
that intention right now is buried in their mind. Nobody knows this, right? So imagine
that we could actually illicit that and bring it out and imagine
There was a way for you, this person, lets call her Jane. Jane can say I would love to
build a garden downstairs and that stairs and that statement leaves her mind and goes
out somewhere right? Suddenly, if that happens many many things can happen. First of all,
just keep in mind and I know this is sort of a little bit different, keep in mind that
this could be happening physically. Imagine this as a little pos it on the wall in the
office or in school or imagine this happening online. We can do both and everything I’ll
say now applies to that to a certain degree to whether it’s online or whether it’s
offline. The main thing is you have said you like to do this. The moment someone says that
many many things can happen right? If you know that your neighbor upstairs wants to
build a garden, whether because you see it online or you see it on the bulletin board.
You can literally like it, by hitting like online or you can say great, lets do it. You
can actually write something on her post it. You can leave her a comment, you can say,
I know exactly who you should be working with. They exist across town. Go and work with them
online or offline. Then it gets even more than that you could actually support that
person, not just say like, I’ll help you do this. It’s a great idea you have, let’s
go do this together and you can share it. Maybe you don’t want to help her, but you
know that john does, because you’ve heard that john wants to build a garden too. So
that idea can then reach john as well. It gets more interesting, especially online,
but also offline. So once something is out there you can also match, match and search.
Imagine a situation where you go in a school and you ask all the kids what would you like
to do for a better school, a better world, a better city and imagine post its on the
wall. You can literally search, you can see oh my god, this person and that person want
to do the same thing lets match them. And of course you can search online, you can search
by keyword, you can actually match people across a city. There are 5 or 6 women in one
city somewhere right now, all of whom want to start the first women’s center in town,
how would they know the other five want to do the same thing. Linkedin doesn’t help
with that, facebook doesn’t help with that. If they could voice that and it could all
be automatically notified that the other person wants to do the same thing, then you could
actually do this. Ok? So you can search and you can match and remember that first non-profit
up there who doesn’t know those two people want to build a garden. Imagine if you could
simply say I’d love to build a garden and they get an email the next day that says that
person wants to build a garden, go help them, they’re waiting for you. Ok? And then lastly
you can of course, track these things, because they exist as little units and you can celebrate
when they’re done, which is really important. Ok? So imagine all of this happening again
either offline or online.
And imagine also using everything we’ve learned in the last, in some cases 20 years?
In some cases 2000 years about what makes groups of people effective and what makes
sort of people want to help each other. One thing we know now is that like I said earlier,
there’s 7 billion of us. It’s very difficult to help 7 billion people. It’s much easier
and more natural to help someone you know, to help a neighbor, to help a colleague, so
instead of that little thing just floating in space like a tweet. Imagine being part
of a group that was launched for your school, for your neighborhood, for your university,
you’re posting something in that group and the people that read it know you. So they
will actually give you a hand. So you’re part of a group that has some social cohesion
already and also we know, we’ve learned this I think in this generation, that the
most effective online groups are those who also meet sometimes offline. And so that’s
the best of both worlds. You meet sometimes offline and you trust and help each other
online. And you’re far nicer to each other, because you also meet offline sometimes. So
that’s great, and lastly I think we have learned that a group like this, any kind of
group, will work better and move forward with a neutral facilitator that’s making the
whole thing move forward. Okay? So imagine a group that is not just a yahoo or Google
or facebook group where people can just talk, a group that’s designed technologically
and by design to do two things. To get people to actually say what they want to do, come
here, tell us, I would love to build a garden, start something new. I would love to, again,
do this for or against, who wants to do it with me.
SO you can say what you want to do online and off and there’s another really important
thing.
You can actually say what’s getting your way,
That’s something that very often we take for granted and sort of put that aside. We
say, hey! Why aren’t people doing more? Well turns out there are really good reasons.
It’s not just, you know time or money. The really good reasons why people don’t do
more, people don’t know where to start. Who to work with, we all have all kinds of
fears. When you actually ask people why is it that you don’t take action. It’s not
just time and money it’s much more than that. It’s fear of starting, fear of being
committed to something, fear of failing in public. It is a lack of skills, information.
So finding out what people want and so imagine having a situation where suddenly a few months
from now we can know that in your city these are the 10 top reasons why people don’t
take action right now. So lets look at the reasons and then do something about them.
So imagine a situation, like we said earlier where people in a group, somewhere in a setting
in a community, have said what they’d like to do. And what’s getting in their way.
The moment that stuff is there whether electronically or on the wall.
They can then help each other do those things. We live in a sort of strange world right now
where all of us know a lot and all of us know nothing. The information in this room is huge.
We collectively, there are probably 30 people here, all, you guys probably have 10,000 facebook
friends. Those friends know a lot. If she says I need this thing in Korean, one of you
has a facebook friend that speaks Korean. So that’s all possible now, this piece is
entirely possible. Once this stuff is out there, but we need to be out, okay? So how
do we get to this situation?
We can do this by, you remember how we had left the connectors earlier? Connectors were
people that said I’d love to solve these really big problems in my area, my community,
my school, my business. I’m willing to be neutral to do it and I’ve met with other
connectors who support each other and make sure we have the tools and tactics to do this.
But then we remember the connector had come from a place, they had said I want to do this
in my building. I’ll do it where I am, they can then go back now and invite people all
kinds of people. Like you see the connectors are all blue, because they all share these
values and these goals. Other people all kinds of people, that have all kinds of goals. They
want to build gardens, they want to volunteer in hospitals, they want to start public policy
campaigns to change whatever in their country. Connector goes out and the job of the connector
is actually not that wide, it’s a pretty limited job. It’s to try to illicit from
people what do you want to do. Tell us! And it can be as simple as sharing this tool,
this new kind of group with people in their area and say come on, tell us what you like
to do. If you tell us maybe we’ll match you with someone. It can be for a survey,
it can be by sitting down, by simply calling a meeting in the office, it’s not that difficult
to call people one day and say hey, what would you like to actually do for a better office,
a better world. Put on the wall, lets see what we can do? So the connectors start a
group, they’re neutral, the group can cover an area, it can cover an issue area. Education
in Paris, poverty in Kampala, it doesn’t matter. There are lots and lots of non-profits
working on poverty in Kampala right now. Some of them feel strongly they should be talking
to each other, great. Poverty in Kampala gets launched and that action can happen within
it. Those people then, like I said, they post their intentions. They post their obstacles;
they share that and that then leads to action. Action is also coming from the tools and tactics
that ah the connectors are implementing around them. So we get this kind of picture where
more and more action is coming from, inspired by connectors, but also people are saying
what they want to do and helping each other do it. If people have idea about what they’d
like to do, that’s great. And maybe you’re in a school somewhere you’re thinking I’d
like to do X. or maybe you just want a better school, you know? You’re not sure where
to start. We said earlier, the world is full of amazing ideas that have been used everywhere
in the world.
How do we get those ideas to you? So you can actually do something with them?
If you think about this example again, these two people went and they built this garden.
When they did it, they used a little flier, poster; it wasn’t great, why should someone
somewhere else have to do it from scratch. They can post it somewhere and the piece,
the idea of taking some of that work for you and sharing it, that’s easy. We understand
these days the idea that we are literally or metaphorically uploading something. Okay
you’ll share it. How would it reach the right person though? That part is really tricky.
Think about how our brains work, we never, we don’t know what we don’t know right?
We don’t get up in the morning and say oh, there’s an empty lot there. It would be
nice to have a garden, let me Google everything else that people in the world have done with
empty lots. No one does that; our brain doesn’t work that way. You want the ideas that would
be good for you. You’re building a garden; you want to get an email today that somehow
knows your building a garden and sends you an email for you that’s a wonderful idea.
So how do we actually do this? What we can do is as groups get created we can take ideas
like these and package them exactly like the ones that we said earlier, but there are many
many more of these right? If we said earlier maybe a couple hundred ideas for encouraging
action, ideas for building a garden, curing a disease, digging a well, planting a tree.
There are thousands of those, package them in a way that makes sense and then know a
little bit more about each group. If a group gets launched in a school and we know that
school is in a poor neighborhood. It’s a relatively small school, it has 300 students
the students are aged X or the group is in the hospital, it's in a neighborhood with
a big hospital in a tropical country. Tell us a little bit about yourself. It turns out
that somewhere in the world there are thousands of other schools that are also small, also
in a poor neighborhood, and they might have also ideas. If they have a great idea that’s
the idea you want to hear about. You don’t want to hear about ideas for a new bridge
in some city whatever; you’re in your school. If you told us, I am this kind of school,
this kind of hospital, this kind of neighborhood you, we can then send you, and we can solve
these problems. These are complete technical of centering the ideas that doesn’t matter
to you and that lead to even more action. Okay? So as we do this, as we try to work
and build this kind of world there are going to be two last side effects I think that I
hope. I think there are going to be many more side effects. Ah
When the web was launched and the when the web was invented, I’m not sure that they
inventor of the web was thinking of cats on youtube, you know what I mean? SO I think
there will be all kinds of other side effects, but definitely I think two side effects that
I think we can already perceive and see coming. One, as we build this kind of thing you’re
gonna see gradually a network of trust emerging.
Between those who want to do this. Maybe you can call somebody in a different country and
say you’re a connector right? You’re working on this kind of thing, great; I have a nurse
here for you. Do you have a house for her? Great, she’s ready to go and so you build
this network of trust that then helps people do more together gradually and trust each
other. And lastly I think, as people naturally create something together, a sense of solidarity
comes up and you can start thinking what else do I have that is unique to me. That I can
contribute to the whole network at very little cost to me. That nurse, again, wants to go
volunteer somewhere in that town; there is somebody else who recently lost her, his spouse.
Why couldn’t that nurse live with that person. The person won’t be lonely; the nurse will
have a place to live. Why not? Far bigger example; there’s an electric company in
town for a company that sells water, utility, gas; they send you a bill every month. They
know where you live, why can’t they print on the back of the bill some volunteer opportunities
that are open right now in your zip code, a database can do that, they print the bills
anyway it’s the same price for the stamp and suddenly you have an electric company
becoming a volunteerism agency. Why not? And of course if one company does this, then we
can learn from that and share do it again, there’s no reason why, if this happens in
one place we can’t keep doing this, and doing this, and doing this, going forward.
So that’s where we are right now, thank you for listening to all this. I really really
believe that all of this is possible right now.
Well, obviously I believe that, but I wouldn’t be sitting here and saying this if I didn’t
believe all of this is possible. It drives me crazy, I’ve been thinking about this
since longer than I want to admit, since before the web was invented, in the 80’s. It drives
me crazy that these two people don’t know about each other yet. That building is changed
all over the world in the last 20 years, 25 years. Most of these buildings in the world
right now have computers and phones and LinkedIn and facebook and these two people still don’t
know. this is, this is crazy. We have to solve our problem; we can connect her to an organization.
She should be in that hospital if she wants and they want her. All of this is possible
right now and it’s possible all over the world.
It’s really up to us to basically do this. We can do all this and we can do all this
and we can do it anywhere.
It’s possible we can do all of this and we can do it now. So the reason we are doing
this today is to ask you if this makes sense to you and to ask if you’ll join us in doing
this?
And there are four major ways to get involved in making this happen and it makes sot he
corresponding to what we are saying here in this presentation.
The first one is like I said; we’re looking for connectors. We’re looking for people
that want to bridge this gap and want to work with us to solve these big problems of intentions,
connections, ideas. That’s first of all, if you’re that kind of person or you know
people like that, please come, please join us or tell them to join us. We’re really
ambitious about this and in the next few months, the next year or two, we would love to find
every person out there who feels this way and wants to solve these problems. It’s
impossible right now. Lets go find them, they exist, thay have a cell phone, they have,
you know they’re accessible lets find them. So that’s number one. Second, entirely sort
of different thing is you actually are the kind of person that wants to take action right…about
something. You want to plant that tree or you want to go here in a hospital. Great.
Come to idealist now and you’re going to find thousands of ways to do that. Thousands
of opportunities, events, action opportunities, just jump in and do it. It’s there for you
and we’ve begun to solve the big problem we referred to earlier. You can not only find
something, you can say there’s nothing there now, but I am Gene, I’m interested in this,
I want something like this when it shows up send it over to me and that will come to your
inbox next day. The moment someone pulls something that you want. Now to clarify something, you
can do both of course on Mondays you can be a connector and on Thursdays you can plant
gardens, it’s fine. It’s just two different roles. For people to actually know what you
do and to volunteer with you. If you run a non-profit or NGO anywhere in the world, join
us. It’s free we need you here; we need to post your opportunity so people can work
with you. And we need your expertise, if people want to plant that garden; they need you to
teach them how. That hospital for you to show up as a nurse, they have to say I need a nurse,
so come over and tell us what you need. It’s all available right now in English and Spanish
and French, please come and post your stuff. And lastly, if you’re the kind of person
that likes this idea, this all sounds good to you, but right now you’re busy, you don’t
really want to be a connector right now. There’s no garden you want to build, nothing you really
want to do, but you want to support this whole thing, great, come in there to and there are
different ways for you to simply spread the word, support this whole thing, and make all
of this possible.
We want a situation a year from now where some of these very very specific problems
have been resolved where there’s a way of packaging ideas and sending them to the right
person. Where teams exist everywhere and are working together on this and they feel solidarity
towards each other and if one of them gets, sort of touched, we can say leave my connector
alone. We’re all here for you, so that can all happen, that can all happen this year.
In additional to all that, a year from today, I’d like for every one of us around the
world to have the biggest party ever and celebrate what we actually did this year. That would
be great! In the south of the world we can go dancing maybe because it’s warm and in
the north we’ll see what we can do. They can go skating, I don’t know. Whatever on
the ice, but lets have a big ah party. So, I think we can do this now. Thank you for
listening to all this, I hope it made sense and thanks for joining us all over the world.
It was wonderful to have you and if you want to join us right now go to idealist.org/team
or that big orange button that you have as you’re watching and take it from there.
Okay, guys here in the room, thank you, you were great. Around the world thank you.