How wise children with just pennies can make a HUGE difference to our world

Today, we learned about how children with a few resources could make the world a better place. I asked my students if they knew any inspiring stories of children to share with the class. They started to talk about my daughter's philanthropic mission to India and how this was instrumental in inspiring me to join Sravish Sridhar in "We Flap". My daughter graduated from their school last year and it pleased me that they looked to her as inspiration. Then, as they had no more stories to share, I shared one very inspiring story that moved me beyond words. It was the story of a 4 year old Nora Gross who had inspired her father Teddy Gross to start an organization called Commoncents (http://www.commoncents.org/) after she had shown kindness to a homeless man on the street. It had amazed me that this organization had the largest child philanthropy program in the United States called Penny Harvest where children between the ages of 4-14 who have a natural compassion for others have been collecting pennies and converting those pennies into grants for community organizations. I could not wait to show a video of their work to the kids.
http://www.commoncents.org/index.cfm?objectId=F3018731-3048-32DA-18746AC36ED53DA2

It was the longest video they had watched during our sessions but were interested nevertheless. The video was a great resource. It helped the students understand that, as children, they have the ability to look into their communities, see problems, ask questions, participate in decision making and help solve problems. Also, that loose change can make a huge difference in our world!

The power of passion!

As a child, I always wanted to be a teacher and pretended many a time to teach my dolls on a sofa. And as I grew up, I got to play teacher with my friends, teach poor children on the street how to speak and write English and volunteer to conduct drama programmes for children in schools. All this while my passion for creative art, drama and conversation instruction made me want to be a teacher all the more. Finally after I completed all of my education, I did have the opportunity to work as an art teacher, a drama teacher and a kindergarten teacher in India.

Now, after 22 years of being in the states, I find myself following my passion once again, having the incredible opportunity of using "We Flap" as a tool in teaching philanthropy to 4th and 5th grade students at an elementary school in Austin, Texas. These past several weeks of teaching have been an enriching experience for me and I am really looking forward to meeting all of my students tomorrow to discuss our topic - How wise children with just pennies can make a HUGE difference to our world?

Music for Change

One of my favorite memories as a kid was the day my parents presented me with my first guitar. Since then, I've learnt how to play a guitar, the tabla, a piano, and I even sang in a school and college band. However, I wasn't really very good as an instrumentalist and I'm an OK singer at best. After learning about Playing for Change, I am now inspired to start playing the guitar again. It is a very innovative and powerful idea - Musicians from all over the world, of all skill levels, getting together to produce music for the greater good, and encouraging others to take up music as well.

I found a great example for a song they made at -

How can kids change the world in 5 minutes?

The last few weeks, I have been spending time at an elementary school in Austin, Texas, to help teach a class of 4th and 5th graders about philanthropy. It has been a truly enlightening experience, and I will write more about it soon.

One aggravating note, however, was when a volunteer parent came up to me and said that she felt all this was a waste of time, and that kids, at this young age, couldn't really make a difference. When I see her the next time, I'm going to ask her to look at this video of kids in Australia that are making a difference in their school.

Why aren't more of us helping?

Over the years, we've had the privilege of being constantly amazed by the fantastic development work that is undertaken by the many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that we have interacted with across the world. At the same time, we've always been surprised by the fact that very few people seem to know about these NGOs.

We wondered - how much do our friends actually know about social development?

We spoke to people in several countries, and asked them what areas of social development they were most passionate about. We received many passionate answers – "Child literacy... women’s empowerment.. HIV education .... poverty reduction, ..." - the list went on and one. Everyone pontificated about how much the world needed to change. "Excellent!", we thought to ourselves. "All our friends are a lot more informed that we thought. This is inspiring!". We then asked the same people if they knew of NGOs that worked in those fields, and if they could name a few for me. Crickets! "Err... Urm.... Err...."

Most of us have an interest in being good and the impulse to want to help social issues. However, there seem to be factors that prevent us from becoming involved with these social causes. Some of them are –

• We don’t know enough – In spite of online search engine tools and a plethora of other information at our disposal from various sources, we find it difficult to get a quick snapshot of the NGOs that work on the social causes that we feel passionately about. Moreover, how do we trust that the information is valid? How do we know that the information is not out-dated, but is actually current?
• We’re too busy – Most of us don’t have time to manage our day-to-day lives. We have got used to information being available instantly, and therefore, if we can’t find answers to meet our needs in a minute or two, we abandon our efforts. How can we then become involved in social causes if it is difficult to learn about them? How we can help NGOs, if it requires us to dedicate a lot of time to search for them – time that we don’t have?
• We never hear about most NGOs –Most NGOs do not do a good job of building their brand and getting their name out. This is usually because they do not have the resources to promote their work to a large audience. So, if the NGOs don’t promote themselves, how can we ever learn about and then eventually, help them?
• We need peer-validation –Very often, we get involved in helping an NGO if someone we trust is also helping that organization. Where can we find a place that allows us to collaborate with a network of friends, who we trust, to help NGOs as one team of people with similar interests and passions to help solve social issues?
• We need more options to help –We find that people are getting used to having many options in every decision-making aspect of their lives. However, most of us usually only have 2 ways in which we can help NGOs – 1) Send them money, or 2) Volunteer with our time. Why should philanthropy be any different? Why can’t we choose how we want to help an NGO? Why aren’t we being given various options that describe the needs an NGO?

At We Flap, we are sure there are more reasons. But if We Flap can successfully address the factors that stop us from being more socially involved, will the millions that are standing outside the philanthropy fence jump in and take action?

We Flap? Why the name?

The butterfly effect is a phrase that is often used to explain more technical notions of a prominent field of study in physics called chaos theory. One famous talk on the subject of chaos theory was titled "Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The main premise of chaos theory suggests that in any dynamic system, small variations in its conditions may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.

Along the same lines of the butterfly effect, when we were planning our strategy for our new organization, we had a fundamental belief that many people want to collectively help address various social issues in some small way. And this collective help had the potential of creating world-changing development. However, the present conditions and requirements to be philanthropic, prevented most of us from tackling social causes, and therefore, we had to change these conditions.


So we coined the name –
We Flap.

We believe that if we can all get together and help NGOs tackle various social causes in some small way, then we can collectively affect great philanthropic change.