A crash course in changing the world.
Kauai is an island in the state of Hawaii susceptible to hurricanes and tidal waves. In 1992 before I arrived here there was a category 5 (really big) hurricane called Iniki that devastated the island with sustained 150 mile per hour winds for several days. The hurricane basically hovered over Kauai island for a long time. Crops were destroyed, chicken coops were upended, and homes were roofless. It took years to rebuild. There was some issue with food shortage in the aftermath of the hurricane. A state of emergency was declared and FEMA brought some supplies, but most people say not enough, and not fast enough.
I don't know very much about exactly what happened with the logistics of food supply in the aftermath of Iniki. I only know what stories the locals have told me of their personal ordeals. One woman tied a rope around herself and her three children during the hurricane, so they wouldn't blow away. A girl I work with remembers her father running out of the house in the middle of a tremendous wind surge. She thought he was running away and apparently this traumatized her a great deal, since she was only three or four. Another gentleman told me his family owned a hotel that was closed for over a year after the hurricane due to a new set of building codes that were implemented by the city council. It cost his family millions of dollars and contributed to the decline of property values in the area. This led to an influx of wealthy buyers who purchased tens of thousands of acres at very low prices. This man I speak of is actually quite angry with the city council for handling the aftermath of hurrican Iniki because he feels they were manipulated by these wealthy buyers and contributed to much local land being "stolen" from its rightful indigenous "Hawaiian" ownership.
But that's not why I'm writing this post. I'm writing this post to speak about the Kauai Food Bank. The Food Bank provides food to hungry people, and solicits donations from the community through our local radio station KKCR -- one of the great community-run radio stations of the world. On several occasions in the past two years the Kauai Food Bank has reached dangerously low storage numbers, threatening its capacity to provide food for hungry people. Ideally, the Food Bank would like to have enough food to feed tens of thousands of people for several weeks, in the event of another natural disaster of the scope of hurricane Iniki. During these times of distress, the Food Bank placed calls to the community through the local radio deejays. Sure enough, the community has responded on each occasion with an outpouring of canned goods and non-perishable items. Often enough it takes merely a genuine voice on the radio to spark action in the community.
Perhaps this is something we can apply to our current Mission 3 in Rio, as a way of critiquing our Evoke storyline. There is an issue with the television. The favela dwellers are watching futbol, and they like it. What if the futbol announcer could say something special using his own talents and spontaneous feelings to spark a major windmill generating movement?
If one of Alchemy's agents, or perhaps merely a well-meaning broadcast executive, could put in the Urgent Evoke to the announcer or his team, perhaps if the timing were just right we might experience social innovation at the very apex of entertainment and customer satisfaction? peace // cameron
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