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.
A few months back, I made a blog post saying I don’t like to flaunt my religious beliefs. Part of the reason for that is because it doesn’t matter what my beliefs are. What matters is that – no matter our differences – we unite under a common goal: to fight (and eventually end) extreme global poverty.
In fact, I had written:
In my opinion, peace on Earth will come when we stop hating what is different among us and start loving what it is we have in common. When we finally do that, I think we will find that we share the same wisdom – though we may find it in different places and from different books.
This little project may not have changed the world – but it seems to have created a little bubble of the kind of world that a lot of us would like to see. I started to realize this when I started going over those who had made donations to this project. Take a look at some of the countries people have been donating from:
What makes this even more interesting is that it seems that virtually every race, religion, and ethnicity has contributed to this project. Corresponding with a few of the donors I know for a fact that atheists/agnostics, Jews, Christians (and not just Catholics from Notre Dame), Muslims, and Hindus have all contributed to this project.
I used to think Mahatma Gandhi’s phrase “be the change you want to see” was just cliché beaten to death by countless charities, fundraisers, and organizations. But, I gotta say… I’m starting to become a believer in that saying.
(Photo Credit: Flag Icons Made by IconDrawer.com)
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.
Please don’t ask me where I got this. In fact, some in my family are worried this could get me in serious trouble. Below is a copy of the letter written by Dhaka University Professor Hawlader to the Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission Chairperson.
The reason I’m posting this is because this is a side of Bangladesh that most people abroad don’t know about. I’m not talking about the allegations of corruption. I’m talking about how politically active students and university professors are in this country. Back in Toronto and at Notre Dame, I’ve known tons of students (and a few professors) that have signed petitions, endorsed politicians, and even participated in protests and marches. But their political activity pales in comparison to most of the students and professors in Bangladesh. In fact, those curfews that were imposed a few months back, were instigated when students and professors took to the street and started rioting in protest of the government. It’s kind of weird and surreal to see this kind of passion.
I’ve talked about the problem of corruption in this country previously, but even I feel this professor’s letter is a bit over the top. Maybe I don’t know the political situation in Bangladesh well enough, but I’m simply not one of those bloggers that has to analyze and critique Bangladesh’s political system. There isn’t anything wrong with voicing dissent, of course. But, as someone who has come to this country as a foreigner, there is more to praise than criticize about Bangladesh’s political system. Bangladesh is one of the few Muslim-majority countries which is a constitutional democracy. Bangladesh also has had more years under female leadership than Western Nations like the UK and Canada. They are also at peace with all of its neighbors (albeit, Bangladesh is surrounded on all sides by India).
Unlike Professor Hawlader, in my books, Bangladesh is far from “hapless”.
When your video gets posted to the front page of YouTube – thousands upon thousands of people will be able to see your video. That’s exactly what happened with my latest video. There are a LOT of comments. Over 500 of them and counting. A lot of it was hateful (e.g. racial slurs), personal (e.g. off-color remarks about my family) , and poorly written (e.g. lots of swearing). This is to be expected whenever anyone gets a video featured on YouTube. But, admittedly, this video got a bit more flak than other featured videos.
I think the reason for that is because I touched upon a nerve. I have tried to make all my videos as non-partisan as possible, but in this video I tried to address the issue of some politicians using the Bible selectively to support their policies. Some politicians will quote the Bible verbatim to justify policies in stem cell research, gay marriage, and abortions. But what about fighting poverty?
What about 1 John 3:17? In it says: “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”. Or what about Ezekiel 16:49? In that it says: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” Or how about Proverbs 14:31? Where it says: “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”
I’m not saying that religion should or should not enter politics. That’s for a democracy to decide. But, if religion is going to enter politics – which it often does – than it shouldn’t be used selectively or cherry-picked.
