What would you say if I gave your donations to someone whom (until recently) I never met, who used it on a country I've never been, and helped people I've never seen?
What you would get is this video:
First, it must be said that this is far less sketchy than it seems. Rohan was a friend of mine long before I sent him a dime. I trusted him enough as a friend before I entrusted him with part of this project. That, of course, does limit how often I can do things like this.
Second, there is a specific reason I wanted ...
Why I Went to VidCon
[caption id="attachment_2489" align="aligncenter" width="481" caption="Hank & John Start VidCon Early in the Morning (thus the rare shot of empty seats)"][/caption]
VidCon. In a word? WOW. As one friend put it, "it's like the internet exploded into real life". It was surreal, amazing, & awesome to meet people that I've only been able to see through my computer screen.
Even though there wasn't nearly enough time, I'm in awe at how seamlessly online friends turned into "real life" friends. In most cases it's like you've known someone for ages and are just hanging out.
[caption id="attachment_2488" align="aligncenter" width="482" caption="This photo makes me look more ...
My 5 Fact Pitch to Save the Children
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.
[caption id="attachment_2423" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Save the Children's USA HQ (pic by Madge Canning)"][/caption]
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 ...
Does Steve Jobs Care about Global Poverty?
Less than 24 hours ago, Apple surpassed Microsoft to become the world's biggest tech company. As someone who used to spell Microsoft with a dollar sign, I can't believe what I'm about to say: this is a bad thing for the world.
The only thing I love more than Apple is what I use my Mac gear for: fighting poverty in developing countries. In this regard, unlike Microsoft & Bill Gates, Apple & Steve Jobs don't seem to care much about poverty and global development.
[caption id="attachment_2235" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="One runs the biggest tech company in the world, the other is a global ...
Hank & John Start VidCon Early in the Morning (thus the rare shot of empty seats)
VidCon. In a word? WOW. As one friend put it, “it’s like the internet exploded into real life”. It was surreal, amazing, & awesome to meet people that I’ve only been able to see through my computer screen.
Even though there wasn’t nearly enough time, I’m in awe at how seamlessly online friends turned into “real life” friends. In most cases it’s like you’ve known someone for ages and are just hanging out.
This photo makes me look more epic than I ever have the right to be.
Hank & Me on Stage
It was also a real honor to be able to speak in front of 1,700+ people at VidCon. I can’t thank Hank & John Green enough for this opportunity.
In all honesty, if they were picking speakers solely based on number of YouTube subscribers & views, than I would never have been picked. But, that’s part of the reason I’m so grateful I had this chance.
I believe that YouTube is an unprecedented force for good in this world. Forget the haters – we as a community can do amazing things. But, I believe the power of this community remains largely untapped.
With the exception of YouTube featuring stuff, the conversation about global poverty is but a small teeny tiny fraction of the conversation going on YouTube. That’s something I’d like to change.
I’m trying my best – but I can’t do it alone. It’s hard because I can’t do what normal YouTubers do to climb the charts and become a success.
For example, I can be informal & casual but – given the subject matter – I can’t be too silly. Although I want to, I also can’t make videos on a regular & frequent schedule. I’m forced to balance doing a good job on-the-ground with spending time making videos.
In some cases, the projects I do take years to complete. They require planning, networking, budgets, on-the-ground trust building, and also need to account for natural disasters & political unrest which push back schedules.
The video I showed at VidCon is a perfect example. It took 1,000 days to bring this story to an audience. It’s hard to do something like that on a weekly basis. It’s for that reason I need the YouTube community to help me share & spread videos like this one:
So speaking at VidCon was very important because, not only is what I do funded by the YouTube community, the future success of this project is entirely dependent on how much support this work gets on YouTube.
This trip to VidCon wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Hank Green (VidCon event organizer and vlogbrother) who sponsored my flight to VidCon and Patrick Clinger at ProBoards who sponsored my room, board, and stay in Los Angeles.
For this year’s Project for Awesome, I decided to pull out all the stops and show you guys a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing but haven’t had the time to put into individual episodes or videos. I keep saying that this project is less about me and more about the community behind it – hopefully this latest video helps convey that.
And, yeah, this video does use copyrighted music by Coldplay (part of EMI Records). I did enough research into YouTube’s agreement with EMI Records and am fairly certain this video won’t be taken down. But, of course, I also had to forfeit any chance of earning any ad revenue and (as I later found out) any reasonable chance of having this video being featured or promoted. EMI can also reserve the right to take down this video, region lock it, or place ads on it where they can earn all the ad revenue from it (just like the Counting Crows & Universal Music have region locked my Cyclone Sidr video and take all the ad revenue from it).
But that’s cool. This was a kind of video I wanted to make for ages. I just never could find the right match of visuals and music until I heard “Life in Technicolor ii” by Coldplay.
Following-up on my blog post about the Tour de Nerdfighting – here’s my video from that event. There is also lots of deleted scenes and bonus footage from this event up on my secondary channel. Hope you check it out!
Hello from Plano, Texas! I’ve got some great news. First, I got to meet Hank & John Green. They are even more amazing in real life than they are online. If you want to see them, they are going on a Cross-America trip called the Tour de Nerdfighting. Check this map to see when and where they will be next – you can even RSVP by clicking on the city location.
Second, if you’ve ever wanted to make a donation but 1) Can’t or don’t want to use PayPal and 2) Don’t like how PayPal takes a cut of every donation – than there is a great opportunity for you to get involved in this project in a way that guarantees 100% of your donation is used. And best of all? I don’t ever have to touch a dime.
Hank and John will be accepting donations at every stop of their tour up until November 12th. On November 12th, they’ll be in Westport, Conneticut – the home town of Save the Children USA. If all goes according to plan – they’ll be handing over the donations directly to Save the Children. That money will be spent based on how you guys vote in my Challenge Poverty video. Voting is still open – so please do get involved!
I don’t have to touch your money, 100% of the funds raised go straight to helping the poor, you get to decide how it’s spent, and it all helps one of the world’s greatest international charities. How more awesome can it get?
Click the jump for some photos from the Plano event…
How do you measure success? Even though I’m not an NGO, should I measure success by the aid I’ve been able to give? Even though I’m not a charity, should I measure success by the money I’ve been able to raise? Or, since I have a blog and a YouTube channel, should I instead measure success by view counts, website hits, and number of subscribers?
I won’t lie – those are all very important measures of success. But I’m not a NGO – this isn’t about doing things at the same scale as those big guys. I’m also not a charity – this isn’t about pulling in the big dollars. And, especially given the subject matter that I’m focusing on, I’ll never be able to develop a cult-like aurora of celebrity (although I think that’s probably for the best).
Rather, the more time I spend doing this project, the more I realize what matters the most is not the things I give, nor the funds I raise, nor even the popularity this project receives. What matters the most is the lives that this work has been able to touch – both here on the ground and online. And, by that measure – and by that measure alone – this project stands to eventually have (or already has) a success that is second to none.
Having been here in Bangladesh for over a year, and with the one year anniversary of my first blog post coming up, I thought I would share some of the most memorable moments of this project to date…
Most Memorable Game Changing Experience: Matt Joins the Project
I can’t take credit for Matt’s decision to fly to Uganda to try and make a difference. Anyone who has had the privilege of getting to know Matt would realize he was bound to do something like this sooner or later. What I can – or rather, what all of those following this project – can take credit for is making Matt’s trip to Uganda a lot more meaningful than could have otherwise been possible.
Matt had gone to Uganda with the expectation he’d be helping some family move beyond subsistence level agriculture. What, instead, he found is that things are always harder than it seems. Much of his two months there were spent trying to reconcile disparities in what various funding agencies wanted and what the locals there were the most comfortable with.
Matt had eventually resigned himself to the fact that the big impact he wanted to make wasn’t going to happen. But, thanks to you guys, we were able to fund his microfinance project ourselves. In fact, and this still surprises me, within 48 hours of announcing that I would be helping Matt – two fans of this project stepped up and decided to fully fund Matt’s project.
Because of that, over 180 grandmothers will be getting the livestock that is needed to move beyond subsistence level agriculture. This was done via an interest-free microfinance loan funded by you guys – and supervised by a government approved and registered NGO in Uganda.
The only thing I’m debating is who is the most grateful: Matt for the assistance he was able to get, the grandmothers for the help they received, or me for Matt joining this project in the first place.
Most Memorable Online Community Experience: Nerdfighters
To the outsider, the whole concept of Nerdfighting might seem a bit.. childish? Made of Awesome? In your pants jokes? DFTBA? But the fact of the matter is that the Nerdfighting community has been – by far – the most important community I have had the honor of being a part of.
And I say that not because of the help John and Hank have provided in helping to spread the word and raise funds. Rather, Nerdfighting is important because of what it represents. On YouTube, it is very easy for “community” to be nothing more than a fan club centered around a charismatic celebrity-like personality.
Nerdfighting – on the other hand – is centered around an idea, not a person. It’s about having fun, making friends, and doing good (aka decreasing “worldsuck”). Although all this was started by John and Hank Green, since its inception, it’s extended far beyond just being about them.
John and Hank Green have been able to show what a genuine YouTube community can be like. And, by being able to team up with them, this is an opportunity to show what kind really tangible on-the-ground impact such a community can have.
Most Memorable Impact: Helping Single Mothers
When it comes to my single most memorable impact – I actually have a hard time narrowing it down to just one. There are actually two experiences that distinctly stick out in my mind. Both of them, actually, deal with helping single mothers as they struggle to support their children with little or no money.
The first one was helping a widow support her children (seen in the photo above). That is definitely the single most tangible impact I’ve had on any person’s life. There is also the single mother I met during my return to the Cyclone Sidr disaster area. That was really my emotional high point and – by far – the biggest emotional impact I’ve had on any one person’s life.
Both experiences actually highlight something else I’ve learned over the course of this past year. While I may not be able to compete with the sheer scale of big NGOs and charities, the approach I’ve taken with this project has allowed me to give a special attention to detail that charities aren’t able to do. I’ll have more on that in Part Two.
I titled this video “Using YouTube with a Purpose” because, really, this couldn’t have been done without the help of a little website called YouTube and the community that is part of it (in particular the Nerdfighter community). From the donors Hank and Pat – both of whom are YouTubers – to the musicians who lent their music for free in this video such as Jamison Young, Brad Sucks, and Josh Woodward. And, here in Bangladesh, if Rick Davis never found my videos on YouTube – I would have never thought to make this trip nor would I have been able to meet the amazing children in this rural village.
If you notice in this video, I use a clip from one of my sadder videos – The Hard Lessons of Aid Work. That’s because, even though I don’t talk much about it in this video, I did learn a lot from this experience. I now have a better understanding about why big name charities need to have large overhead and infrastructure. I also have a better understanding of how help can sometimes come with a risk and how even trying to help can sometimes have it its pros and cons.
All that plus some photos from the field after the jump.
Part of the reason I decided to start accepting donations is because I wanted to you guys involved in this project in a way that didn’t force you to be a mere spectator. In my previous video, I talk about how I”m going to spend a donation made by Hank Green. Well, thanks to YouTube, you can get to know Hank Green and why he decided to donate to me:
Hank runs EcoGeek.org and also – along with his brother – runs the vlogbrothers channel. But, if you are made of awesome you’d know that already
This is not a charity, organization, or anything formal. It’s my journey to try and make the world a better place - one meaningful difference at a time. It’s about inspiring others to believe that we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty. Hopefully, this project can also show the big multinational organizations that there is a better way to engage people on the issue of global poverty.
About Me
I'm Shawn - a 29 year old Canadian from Toronto. Before starting this project, I was a graduate student on scholarship at Notre Dame University. My life took a turn after I met Dr. Jeffrey Sachs (author of the book "The End of Poverty") when he came to give a speech at Notre Dame. That speech inspired me to withdraw from grad school, liquidate my savings, and begin this journey to try and make the world a better place - one meaningful difference at a time.