https://static.ning.com/socialnetworkmain/widgets/index/logo.gif); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-position: 100% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">This is a project which is based on 2 basic ideas:
1. Social networks are filled with millions (and in facebooks case hundreds of millions) of people. accessing these people is a matter of making an application interesting enough to be viral.
2. If many people work on the right task for less than 30 min a week, great things can happen.
So here is the Idea:
The Human Race Project is an application that can attach itself to any social network (and stand alone on its own site if needed). This application would have different activities (from now on to be called challenges), each with a different way to pool the small efforts of many people and create a sizable difference. Each challenge will show each participant the huge difference made by everyone together, strengthening the feeling of accomplishment. Any person can participate in as many challenges as they want spending as much time as they want on them. The more time spent on a challenge the greater the impact on the issue.
Challenges are split into categories:
1. Challenges that directly help a cause (examples soon to come).
2. Project Challenges - creating great things with many people.
3. Challenges that prompt people to change behavior.
Examples:
A challenge that directly helps a cause:
Commercial Donation - People can watch and rate commercials. Each commercial would award them a small amount of money (a few cents) which they will be able to donate to one of a few options of charities. The money donated to the charities will be shown on the application so they see the difference they have made. Plus, if they rate the commercials they watch, we can keep circulating the better ones and take out the less good ones, thus creating a self bettering system. At the end of the week we can show the top 10 best commercials, giving yet another sense of accomplishment and a service to the company making them.
www.freerice.com - This is just an example though I think it would be best to use them rather than create another. The application would ask people questions (SAT, word games,math, geography, art and more), for every right answer we donate 10 grains of rice or a cup of water to the UN to distribute. The website www.freerice.com is already doing this. we can create an application for a social network and double the amount donated. This application promotes learning and food donation. Once again, the amount donated by everyone would be show at the top to make people feel they've made a difference.
Project Challenges:
Family Tree - People would be asked to give the names of their family members (only names),as far back as they know. we then place them on a giant digital family tree for the entire world (or as much of it as we can get). If, for example, cousins both sign on and write their names, the program will calculate that they are related and ask them. If they say yes, they become connected and another piece of the puzzle is found. With ancestors one would be able to add pictures and evidence of their life to remember them by. This application connects the world together and remembers its history.
Photosynth - There is a program called Photosynth which creates a 3D image of different photos taken by people. 2000 photos of a locations can create a 3D model of it. we would ask people to upload vacation photos (or to use the ones they already have on the network) and thus create different models. An example would be a place that needs to be remembered (like a Holocaust memorial) this place would then be online in 3D made out of the testimonies of thousands of individuals
Behavior Challenges:
Power consumption - What if we could ask peoples permission to show their power average weekly power consumption and then allow them to compare it with others, and themselves in the future? Every Wat saved would be counted to show how much power was saved. The same can be done with water.
I don't know how possible this is, but the idea is the important thing. Creating a system which prompts people to save energy and then rewards the socially for what they have saves. The over all power saved by everyone will be constantly compared to other things (the power of a small town for a day, a wee, a city for 10 minutes... and so on).
These are only a few possible applications to be attached to the project. The goal is to have different types of challenges that people can choose between. Each has its own benefits and a different way of doing things. Some challenges help solve hunger issues, some conserve power or water, all make people feel as if they can make a difference.
This application can be attached to any social network (Facebook, Myspace, even Evoke), and also stand on its own. I believe people want to do the right thing if they feel it really makes a difference. They want to do it on their own time, and with no pressure. This is the perfect system for that.
The first 1000$ would go to hiring a programmer to start mapping and building the application. I believe the site could work off donations or small commercials like other applications. It should not cost too much to start up or maintain. This is a non profit idea.
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