Welcome!
Many of us might remember growing up with Shel Silverstein’s classic “The Giving Tree,” a children’s book about a tree that gives unselfishly and un-selflessly until there literally isn’t anything else to give. With the TedActive Giving project we want to to embrace the joy of giving BUT explore ways to make giving a sustainable act. We all know that giving until you have nothing else to give isn’t always rewarding and makes it harder to give again. In the next couple of days we’d like to unpack the personal motivations around generosity and how it might be instilled as well as the infrastructures that might enable our giving to have greater impact.
Already the Facebook dialogue has surfaced interesting questions around cultural diversity and the ways it can impact our notions of giving, thoughts on how game theory and how it might help motivate and incentivise giving and structural questions about removing the “middleman” from the giving equation. We expect a lot of questions and a lot of ideas on this topic.
I’m Fred Dust of IDEO and I’ll be working to facilitate the conversation while Mike Radparvar will be getting ideas out into the world and Grant Gittlin will be helping to build and tell the stories that come out of the next couple of days. If you see us definitely stop to chat and we’ll be sending out prompts to you as well.
Remember to use the twitter hashtag #activegiving when posting and definitely tune in here and on the facebook page for the latest happenings and conversations. Also we’ll be posting a rough “how to participate” guide and questions and prompts here throughout the next couple of days.
Hi,
I’d like to discuss the recenty started global initiative amongst members of the Bohri Muslim community whereby every household registers to get food from a community kitchen. The food cooked and distributed in lunch boxes is the same for everyone and the menu changes everyday. Those better off contribute to fund the initiative but because there are a lot of people contributing, the cost gets subsidised for all and the less privileged get a meal for free.
It’s happening in every city in the world where Bohris live so the scale is impressive and the benefits include social equality, liberation for women from the kitchen, community building, social participation and, of course, encouraging the act of giving sustainably.
Unfortunately, I’m not in Palm Springs. How do we discuss this?
Cheers
Yousuf
hi yousuf,
this is a beautiful model. id love learn more about this! we also have a specific facebook group called [http://www.facebook.com/groups/TEDActiveGiving/] where are can definitely keep the conversation going with many more #activegiving minds!!