UP | uncultured project

This year the banks and financial institutions receiving bailout money decided to hand out over $18 billion dollars in US Taxpayer Money in bonuses. Here’s some food for thought:

$18 Billion Dollars is twice the amount allotted for the mass transit stimulus package. That money would be used to shore up America’s roads and bridges – and help make sure that tragedies like the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota never happens again.

$18 billion dollars is also 12 times the amount needed to provide every man, woman, and child in Africa a long-lasting insecticide treated mosquito net that would protect them from malaria for 5 years or more.

Whether or not you think this is a convenient time to be worried about fighting global poverty, let’s never again say there isn’t enough money.

Last Thursday was a good day for the YouTube Community. One YouTube’s biggest personalities (Michael Buckley of the What the Buck Show) was on the frontpage of the NY Times. The article was about something a lot of people within the YouTube community already knew – how it’s possible to make money (sometimes a lot of it) through YouTube.

I posted this scan of the frontpage of that issue because I wanted to show you what the main story on the frontpage was. You might not think that a story about the plight and suffering in the people in the third world (the frontpage story) has anything to do with YouTube. But for me – and what I’ve devoted myself to these past two years of my life – they couldn’t be any more related.

We live in incredibly trying financial times. Forget the boardroom table, all of us are feeling this hardship at the dinner table. And money which could have been used to provide mosquito nets to every man, woman, and child in a malaria hot zone, or education to every child in the developing world, or clean water to every human being on the planet – is instead being spent on bailouts for Wall Street.

As it gets harder for us to convince politicians the importance of those beyond our borders – we’ll need new ways to continue the fight against global poverty. And YouTube is absolutely critical to that. This year’s Project for Awesome is a great example of that. We can keep the conversation going about global poverty well into a future where the mainstream media debates whether the day’s main story should be about a new bailout or Britney’s new single.

And, as my parents and I look into the family financial situation to see how many months (not years) this project can continue, this NY Times article is a poignant reminder of the fact that it is theoretically possible to make this project sustainable. All that we’ve been able to do together – all the lives this project has been able to touch – cost about 1/10th of what Michael Buckley earns through YouTube’s partnership program.

I’m not saying I will ever (or even deserve to be) as popular as Buck. Whether or not I can continue to sustain what I’m doing, I just hope that one of the greatest technologies of modern history can be used to fight one of the biggest plights that humanity faces.

[UPDATE: The Project 1010 guys took the video down but I'm told the a new version will be up soon. I'll fix the video link in this post when that happens.]

I recently stumbled upon this charity in Kenya called The 1010 Project. I just had to share this with you. Why? Just look at the video:

You aren’t left feeling pity or like you’ve been taken on a guilt-trip. This is how you change the conversation about global poverty.

I also want to get in touch with these guys because I want to know how they were able to get permission to use Sigur Ros’s music. A while back I tried to get permission but I never heard back from those guys…

One of the reasons I decided to be a part of Blog Action Day is because what happens on October 15th doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens on October 16th, 17th, 18th, etc, etc… until the day finally comes that extreme global poverty is a thing of the past.

Because, let’s face it, finding a blogger that doesn’t care about ending poverty is like trying to find a beauty queen that doesn’t care about world peace. Rhetoric is easy – action is harder. And I don’t mean making a donation – there was a lot of that going on yesterday. What I mean is making this a priority in our lives.

This (past) Canadian election and this upcoming US election are two great ways for people to do that. The fact is, if our politicians were as generous and concerned about ending global poverty as the people following this little project of mine – global poverty would already be something in the history books.

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.

Changing the Conversation is more than a slogan or rhetoric.

I know poverty alleviation will never take center stage on the internet. I know that on YouTube watching dramatic chipmunks, listening to chocolate rain (which I love), or hearing a (guy? girl?) cry about Britney Spears will always be more popular than watching videos about global poverty.

Heck, there are videos about Paris Hilton that are more viewed than every single poverty-related video on YouTube combined. That imbalance may never change – but that’s not the point.

I started this project because I believe people would be willing to be more involved, more concerned, and more interested in ending global poverty if we change how we talk about global poverty. For too long this message has been (mostly) dominated by those that make us feel pity for the poor, guilty about ourselves, and hopeless about solving this problem.

This project is my way of changing that.

In the coming months, the total number of video views of this project will cross one million. That will put this small project (run on a shoe-string budget, helped only by the kindness and generosity of others, and assisted along only by a meager handful of family members with big hearts) in the same league as some of the biggest and most powerful global advocacy organizations.

In fact, if this project crosses 1.5 million views, it will – as far as I can tell – be the most viewed global poverty related channel on all of YouTube – and possibly all of the internet.

Let’s change the conversation – the count to one million begins.