"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
ACT1: one step further
Still collecting material for a good LEARN2 mission, I choosed to finally publish another idea I had after completing ACT1.
Encouraged by Josh Nesbit's reply and trying to be consistent with what I said and suggested on my NEXTSTEP post I would bring my ACT1 mission one step further, to make it real action.
EVOKE suggests always to think big, right?
Well, what I thought is: instead of just asking you to consider donating your old mobile phones, I could try to prove how much I care, by offering myself to actively gather informations and find easy ways to make big EVOKE-labeled donations. Wouldn't it be a great achievement, if we could effectively find an easy way to help African communities getting a better healthcare?
What often discourages people from making donations is, in my opinion:
- the idea that a small gift can't really make the difference (I think it's wrong, and anyway here we're thinking big: we want to make a huge donation)
- the fact that sending a mobile phone, when there are no collecting places close to us, might cost more than the gift value itself
- a natural human inertia for what doesn't imply a reward (I'm not judging, I think it happens to all of us)
Taking a look at the map of Hope Phones collection centers, you see they're quite a lot, but they're just in the US, while EVOKE is worldwide. What I would do in the next days is to write some code for a webpage to collect infos about who has mobiles to give away, how many, and where are those agents.
The action would consist of three steps:
- evaluating the interest for the mission, gathering agents' opinions and suggestions for making action more effective. Feedbacks could be given through comments or personal messages; I'll be happy to read them
- collecting data: agent's name, location, number of phones available. Infos would be collected from a webpage, which I'll prepare and publish on the web (if any mentor reads this, I'd ask if it could be done on EVOKE's website or should it be an external page)
- planning and doing: finding efficient ways to pre-collect phones for mass (hopefully) donation and making it real; I would collect opinions in any form, and ask suggestions directly to Josh Nesbit (who said he'd be glad to help) and plan a collection/sending strategy
Let me know what you think...
Views: 61
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Comment by glim on March 12, 2010 at 5:29pm
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very nice, way to take a local idea and move to scale it up. i like how your thinkin man, thinkin big.
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Comment by Josh Nesbit on March 12, 2010 at 6:38pm
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Brilliant! I'm very excited to join forces on this, Stefano.
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Comment by Murray Britton on March 12, 2010 at 11:54pm
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Many people just toss their old phones out before they even leave the phone store after they get a new one. I wonder if we could contact phone companies AT&T, Verizon etc. and get them to collect old phones and send them Hope Phones way, or even donate.
Since, Businesses rarely do things that wont make them money, what if we could get the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, in Washington, to subsidize the collection and give some money to the phone company for each phone they collect?
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Comment by Claire Moylan on March 13, 2010 at 12:06am
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That's definitely thinking big! Have you checked with your hero to find out what's involved in collecting the phones to figure out if just an agent can handle that?
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Comment by MoE on March 13, 2010 at 8:20pm
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Sorry if I didn't answer before; it's hard to follow everybody's posts and comments, being active on my own blog, and still living some form of daily normal life :)
Thanks for your positive feedbacks, they push me a lot to keep going on this.
@glim @Claire : I'm glad you appreciate big thinking: I believe that there's a big need for it, nowadays, even and above all beyond EVOKE. I also know very well that thinking big doesn't exempts me from being realist; the aim of this post was just to present the idea, but new steps for actualization and problem solving will come.
At the moment, I'm working on a script to let people sign up to the idea, tell if they've phones to donate, leave a message; all of them are going to be shown on a google map, to make evident how close agents are one to each other, and to Hope Phones collection centers.
If the project grows as much as I hope, one agent won't be enough for sure. But I'm confident I'll find a way to EVOKE all of you, dear colleagues :)
@Josh : what to say? It still thrills me the active way you immediately responded to my proposals. I'm really looking further than forward for doing something good with you, with a sense
@Murray : I agree with you; it happens due to many reasons, but it is certain that mobiles (and many other industrial products) are today conceived to live shortly. Both from the marketing point of view, and the manufactoring one, they're designed with an "intrinsic obsolescence".
In terms of sustainable development, such a problem should be solved in the manufacturing phase, to make products last more, not by just recycling (actually downcycling) them at the end of their lives.
But nowadays the situation is as you described it, and that is why I think Hope Phones is to be supported: it helps people, while tamponing a wound in our productive system which is sadly far from being cured.
I'll definitily keep in mind all your suggestions for the next HOPEPHONES mission's steps.
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Comment by Felix Albus on March 22, 2010 at 10:13pm
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I'm in. Now who's collecting in Europe?
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@Murray : thank you for your appreciation, I love being encouraged :)
@Felix : at the moment nobody's still collecting in Europe, but I'm working on it. I'm talking to some friends of mine, here in Rome, who work with e-waste. They're also in contact with other European groups and they're spreading the voice. I just need some time, but I'll let you know for sure. Thank very much for your collaboration!
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Comment by Markus-Eerik Mändmets on March 22, 2010 at 10:33pm
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It is awesome idea, but I have same question as Felix, what about Europe?
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I actually answered Felix, did you read? :)
(if you sign up to the map I can keep track of you and write you as soon as futher steps are taken, otherwise please just check back my blog, from time to time, to see if I posted something new with the tag HOPEPHONES)
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I guess you answered at the same time as I was writing the answer :) Cheers
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