It's the holiday season! Sunday evening I had a great time at a holiday party, a potluck with Michael Pollan and PopTech faculty and fellows in the Bay Area hosted by Tracy Barba from Duarte Design.
That's where I ran into Emily Pilloton, a PopTech Fellow, and founder of Project H Design to mobilize product design ingenuity for social good. Having built nine chapters and a community of over 300 committed designers in just over a year, Project H Design has already launched over 20 projects in 6 countries – water transport solutions, a playground for active math education, designs for foster care therapy and more, all aimed at having a quick and real impact on people’s lives. Add to this her new book “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People,” and Emily is clearly leading the way in designing with – not for – communities, transforming lives and strengthening economies.
Earlier this week, I heard about a fundraising contest that PayPal was running called "Regift the Fruitcake," where you could set up a fundraiser on behalf of a select few nonprofits. Your fundraising page featured a fruitcake and by using Facebook Connect you could regift the fruitcake by sharing it with your Facebook friends and spread the message.
I was a little disappointed not see my favorite charity, The Sharing Foundation, on the list - and experimented some technical glitches with the site. I almost threw up my hands and gave up, but then I noticed Project H on the list and managed to create a fruit cake.
On Friday, I received a check in the mail for $100 from Yahoo for Good as part of their Kindness Campaign. The letter advised me to create a ripple of happiness from a single act of kindness by using the money to do something nice for someone. And, to encourage the recipient to pay it forward. The letter included a couple of purple cards to hand out.
When I ran into Emily at the party, I donated the $100 to the Project H and Emily passed out the cards to the other PopTech Fellows.
If you got $100 in the mail and were told to do a random act of kindness, what would you do?
Comments