UP | uncultured project

Jason Sadler

Inspired by some recent comments on this blog and tweets, I’d like to talk about the direction I feel this project needs to be going. And it starts with the story of Jason Sadler.

Jason Sadler is an entrepreneur who has successfully used social media to generate fame, attention, and wealth for himself through his business called I Wear Your Shirt. Hoping to use his momentum on social media, Jason decided to form his own non-profit organization.

Jason’s non-profit was about providing free clothes to people in Africa. He called his organization “1 Million Shirts” with the goal of getting people to donate 1 million used shirts which he would then ship to needy families in Africa.

A lot of us donate our gently-used clothing to local good-will. And, when I’m overseas, I often find myself parting with some of my favorite shirts because I find people who could benefit from them more than I could. But, on the scale Jason was aiming to do, this could do more harm than good.

Click the jump to read more…

Continue reading ‘This Takes Time’

It’s the first of April, and I’m standing in a dimly lit room with a bright projector light blinding me. In front of me, some high ranking officials who came to hear me speak. This is no April’s Fools joke: this was my presentation to Save the Children USA’s Global HQ.

Save the Children's USA HQ (pic by Madge Canning)

After an hour of Keynote slides, graphs, and videos I was pleased to see that my presentation was well received. Lots of nodding heads. But I needed one more thing. I need to drive the message home. It was time to unleash what I called the secret weapon.

I went to my laptop, loaded up YouTube, and played one last video. This time the video wasn’t filmed in some rural village, it didn’t have fancy editing, and it didn’t have nice background music. It was filmed in the parking lot – just before I stepped into the room.

Yes, I too am mind boggled how my videos could be seen more than any video of her. Do charities need celebrities?

Within the brief time I was giving this presentation, not only did people leave comments – but many people made video responses which I was able to play for staff right then and there. The message of each video was the same: let’s team up and do more projects.

Finally, to hit the last nail, I compared the views of this video to Save the Children’s slickly edited video staring America Ferrera on location in Mali. In less than a couple of hours, this video had more views than America Ferrera had got in over a couple of weeks.

“If this is what I can do for you in your parking lot, imagine what I can do for you in the field”. This, in essence, was my pitch to Save the Children. In fact, it’s my pitch to any charity. It’s not complicated, it’s not bureaucratic, it’s simple. Here are the facts:

• Fact 1: Any charity that uses donations for PR, outreach, or social media needs to justify that it’s spending it wisely for maximum impact.

• Fact 2: To date, all the various branches of Save the Children, are spending millions of dollars (from your donations) and hiring hundreds of staff to raise awareness on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere in “social media”.

• Fact 3: Part of these millions of dollars goes to sending videographers, bloggers, and other PR personnel around the world. Including personnel video blogging from the World Cup in South Africa.

• Fact 4: Despite this, the online reach of all those efforts combined is still less than the online reach of this project. This project is the #1 “social media” source about Save the Children.

• Fact 5: For less than the cost of hiring me, Save the Children can team up with me as a “free agent” again and continue to have access to the reach of this project backed by one very awesome community.

Click for full size: A chart I showed at my presentation showing total YouTube views generated. Blue is Save the Children USA efforts (under 200k views) and Red is globally funded efforts (under 1 million views). Orange is me (over 2.1 million views). Identical trends exist on Twitter.

Despite this, in over a year of discussions, there still isn’t a concrete plan to team up with them in the developing world again.

This has been described as “Not Invented Here” syndrome. Beth Kanter might call it a “fortress” mentality. But the end result is that charities like Save the Children overspend on social media and reach far less people than they could by collaborating with free agents.

A big hit on the ground & online for Save the Children. But I had to beg and borrow to get there and film the conclusion.

If you’re familiar with this project, you probably are familiar with the water project I completed with Save the Children. The video of that got over 100,000 views - that’s far more views than any official Save the Children video has ever got online.

Despite that, during the conclusion of that project, I had to find my own funds to go to the village to film it. Save the Children would not even support the creation of that video by letting me hitch a ride with them from the city to the village.

Bonus Fact 1: As more charities become more like “Networked Non-Profits”, charities that are “fortresses” or have “Not Invented Here” syndrome are either going to have to evolve or make way for better charities.

Bonus Fact 2: I wouldn’t be trying so hard if I didn’t think Save the Children was a charity worth supporting. And part of this comes from the fact that I’ve seen how they conduct themselves on the ground.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how sites like FirstGiving (and JustGiving, Facebook Causes, etc) are a great way for web savvy people to raise money for their favorite charities and non-profits. What most people might not know, is that such sites charge a service fee for every dollar donated. I’m not at all against people earning a living from innovative services – even if those services are meant for charitable uses.

Rather, I was hoping to start a discussion on what is a reasonable service fee for being a middle man. In my original article, I pointed out charities like Save the Children (a vast international charity with staff in thousands and offices around the world) takes only 8% for their overhead costs. Sites which act like a fundraising middle man, like FirstGiving for example, can sometimes charge service fees as high as 7.5%.

Many of you left great comments – both on the original blog post and in the version of this that is attached to my facebook profile. I’m honored that FirstGiving also decided to make an official comment, which I’m including here:

Children in Barguna, Bangaldesh watch YouTube video responses of people who told me to provide this village with clean & safe drinking water. Clean water project implemented with Save the Children.

You can see the full video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJubQzKYMGg

Are you ready for the 17th of December?

This is maybe my final week in Bangladesh.

Since I landed, I’ve been trying to complete projects related to Challenge Poverty. As you know, I’ve been working on building that Pond Sand Filter and repairing that school. It’s been nearly 6 months and I want to wrap everything up in the next 72 hours. Yeah…. that maybe a bit ambitious. Fingers crossed.

The good news is that the water quality of that Pond Sand Filter is now clear, clean, and deemed safe to drink by official tests conducted by the Department of Public Health here in Bangladesh. Here’s a photo. One is a glass of water from the Pond Sand Filter and the other is a glass of store bought mineral water. Can you tell which is which?

Mineral Water (Left), Pond Sand Filter Water (Right) has been tested by the Department of Public Health thanks to Save the Children

Getting to this point has been long. Since landing there was the BDR mutiny which stopped things, Cyclone Aila which stopped things, and normal bureaucracy and office meetings which come with trying to do something like this. Save the Children has been helping me navigate most of this as best they can and now we’re pulling out all the stops to get this done before I fly home.

The question is – am I going back for a break or for good? Back in January, I wrote that if I can’t sustain this project I’m gonna have to pack up in 12 months time. By “sustain” I want to do this in a way that doesn’t impoverish my parents. My savings are long gone – and I do this by borrowing from my parents. We’re not Rockefellers unfortunately – just regular Suburban Middle Class Canadians (basically like Americans… but we get free health care).

I also don’t want to start taking a cut from people’s donations. That still just doesn’t sit right with me.

I’ve decided to spend the next few months trying to figure ways to sustain this work. During this project, I’ve learned a lot about the world of charity work. One things that surprised me is that this field is a hell of a lot more competitive than I ever imagined. Many orgs prefer to copy & compete instead of collaborate & create. These orgs and charities like my approach – but want to replicate it internally instead of teaming up

Save the Children has really been the exception by being supportive, open, and collaborative (instead of competitive). Going forward, I’m hoping there are other exceptions out there…

P.S.

What’s going to happen with your donations? Don’t worry I’m not gonna run away with them! In my attempt to network with more charities and organizations that I’d like to team up with, it’s easier to propose to do certain projects and/or team up when you can assure them you already have the funds. So please, feel free to keep donating to either the project fund or the operating and equipment fund.

These past 14 hours have served as an example of one of the many frustrating challenges a project like this faces.

What many non-Bangla speakers sometimes don’t realize, is that there are many variations of Bangla. There is city Bangla, Bangla used by those who emigrated away from Bangladesh, and rural village Bangla. Each one comes with different accents, meanings, and translations.

This can be a lot of trouble when trying to translate words I’ve heard for the first time in rural villages. This was exactly what happened when a local villager tried to explain to Paul that Cyclone Aila had destroyed many “bhitas”:

In many ways, I relate to this villager a lot. I often throw English words into my Bangla when I don’t know what the Bangla equivalent is. And this villager, while explaining the damage caused by Cyclone Aila, had to throw in “bhita” because he didn’t know the English equivalent.

The problem is that there is no direct English translation for “bhita”. And thus began my 14 hour struggle to find a translation.

The first people I turned to were those from the American-Bangladeshi community. This consists of Americans who originally were born and raised in Bangladesh. To my surprise, many of them told me their Bangla was too poor to properly help with any translation. This includes people who still do business in Bangladesh! I was shocked and surprised.

Those in the American-Bangladeshi community that did try and take a stab at translating each came up with different words. One suggested it means “embankment”, another suggested it meant “landscape” or “property”, someone else suggested it meant “home”, finally one of them suggested it meant “mud hut”. How could one word mean so many different things?

Well it turns out they were all wrong… and right at the same time. Click the jump to find out what the word “bhita” means.

Continue reading ‘Lost in Translation’