UP | uncultured project

Jamison Young, originally uploaded by dominick.chen.

When I started accepting donations, John Green said it best – “this isn’t charity, this is an experiment in community”. Even though I’m not an official charity, accepting donations from the public has been a great way of making a connection between those who this project has been able to help and those who have provided the funds to make that help possible.

In my previous blog post of “Meet a Donor” I introduced you guys to Hank Green (although I’m sure almost everyone reading this blog is already familiar with Hank Green and the vlogbrothers). Hank decided to match my “Xbox 360 challenge” by donating the funds equal to that of buying a new Xbox 360. I used those funds (after a rather remote and shaky journey) to help sponsor a child name Rithanu in the Chittagong-Hill-Tracts.

In this blog post of “Meet a Donor”, I’d like to introduce you guys to someone who has blown me away with his level of generosity and compassion: Jamison Young.

Jamison Young is an Australian born singer who lives in Prague. Even before he donated any money, his contributions to this project have been invaluable. Jamison licenses all his music under the Creative Commons. Not just that, but the specific license Jamison choose lets people use his music (in both for-profit and not-for-profit capacities) without having to pay Jamison a cent for the rights. It’s Jamison Young’s song “How Far” that has been the theme song for this project ever since the second video went online.

And it’s also actually been Jamison Young’s generosity with his work that inspired me to release all my videos, blog posts, and photos under the Creative Commons. I already thought Jamison was a generous guy – but his latest contribution blew me away. One of Jamison’s song actually got featured in the soundtrack of the new X-Files movie. For a guy that normally gives his work away for free, this was one of those opportunities where he actually earned some well-deserved money on his work. And you know what he did? He gave it all away.

Jamison Young at the new X-Files Movie, originally uploaded by jamtea.

So, when voting ends for my latest video, I’ll be going back to Bangladesh to execute whatever you guys have voted for. Depending on which options I end up doing, Jamison’s donation will be enough to cover either a large chunk – or the entirety – of one of the options. How far can this dreamin’ go?

… but just for a bit. I have been reticent on the hosting bills and my grace period ends tomorrow. I’ve tried my best to find a reliable web host that would provide some free hosting. DreamHost said no since I’m not a tax write-off. And Media Temple (whom I approached before I even had a site) said they wanted to see my project in action before making a decision. Despite trying to touch base with those guys – they haven’t replied to my latest inquiries.

If all else fails, I’ll put this as something else to add to the personal debt I’ve accumlated doing this project…

I’m tired of reading about Sarah Palin. Let’s try and get something far more important – Save the Children – up on the Digg frontpage. Please support them (and this project) by digging this submission by msaleem.

I wanted to help Save the Children with my latest video, but that doesn’t mean that Save the Children was under any obligation to team up with me. Quite honestly, they usually only take donors into the field when it’s a very big operation and there is a large amount of money involved. The reason I want to help Save the Children is not because they gave me the time of day, but rather because Save the Children is an organization that genuinely deserves all of our support.

Without sounding like a suck-up, whenever I deal with other charitable organizations, I always mentally compare them to my experience with Save the Children. Unfortunately, more often than not, they usually fall far short of the bar set by Save the Children. For example, not too long ago, I approached another US-based charity with a similar idea. I wanted to spend some of the donated funds to help local families. As I explained this to a NGO official (to a lady based out of Washington DC), she pursed her lips and said “we have a conflict of interest”.

As this Washington NGO lady explained to me, her NGO was also planning on putting up a video about families on YouTube. “And we don’t want to look for families twice” she explained to me. As this conversation continued I realized the priority for this NGO was less about helping the needy and was more about image. I’d mention the name if I thought this was a unique situation. But the sad fact is, that there are far more organizations that want to look like they care than there are organizations that genuinely do care.

What strikes me about Save the Children is how their sole focus seems to be on what’s best for the people they help. From the region they suggested I visit to the items we came up with for the YouTube community to vote on – every step of the way the staff was making sure that the people we were going to help were the #1 priority. The only restriction Save the Children imposed during my filming is that I had to ensure that the locals I wanted to film had to expressly consent to whether or not I could film them (which is something I do anyways).

While I’m sure there are many organizations that genuinely care for those they help, having been on the ground and seen the bad ones, it gives me all the more reason to cherish – and want to help – the good.

Choosing has always been the hardest part of this project. I’ve tried my best to share all the emotions I’ve had during this project like the joy of helping children in the Hill-Tracts, or the anguish and sense of powerlessness during Cyclone Sidr disaster relief, or the craziness involved in reaching some remote rural village. With this latest video, I’m sharing the toughest reality of this project: being forced to choose.

With this video, there is no wrong answer – only tough choices.

More after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Challenge Poverty (with Save the Children)’

So yeah, like I mentioned briefly in my previous post, I’m dealing with a bit of culture shock. Wow.

Admittedly, I decided to make things a bit harder for myself than it could have been. I decided to watch Oprah. The topic? Spoiled rich kids. The last time I saw a four year old, it was on the streets of Dhaka begging and crying for food. Now, I was watching a four year old with her own diamond studded earrings and several thousand dollars worth of Barbie dolls. I think I popped a blood vessel in my head watching that show.

As much as I’d like to go into a tirade about the excesses we have in this part of the world, part of dealing with this kind of culture shock is that you don’t want to become a self-righteous holier-than-thou jerk. We live in a part of the world where it is very easy to get caught up in a way of life that allows us to ignore the plight of others far away from us. But being caught up in this does not mean we’re bad, inconsiderate, selfish or greedy. What it means is that we’re human.

And as humans we can sometimes get caught up in bad habits. In order to break a bad habit, you have to at least admit to it. But ignoring the plight of the global poor isn’t the same as a bad habit like smoking. When you light up, you get scornful looks and pseudo-coughs from others reminding you of your bad habit. But ignoring the plight of the global poor is something all of us (myself included) are guilty of at one point or another while living in this part of the world.

It’s not opulence, it’s not ignorance, it’s not lack of consideration – it’s just a collective bad habit. And, like most bad habits, it’s one that (in the end) will end up hurting us.