On international plane rides, I always look forward to meeting my co-passengers and learning more about out their travel stories. On my way home from Kenya this May, I was fortunate enough to sit next to a fascinating woman on the 16-hour ride from Dubai to San Francisco. She was a student at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry who had recently moved from her home country, India, to the California Bay Area. She had just completed her first experience providing free dental care to people in southern India where she had been able to utilize her fluency in Hindi to translate for her fellow volunteers and their clients in their mobile dental services caravan. We discussed at length the extensive and expanding need for dental services in remote areas in India and other growing and developing countries. Through my experience with dozens of non-governmental organizations promoting access to health care, there has been a constant lack of dental services or a comprehensive program that coordinated more opportunities for people to seek free dental services in other areas in the world.

After starting my internship with the NGO team at UniversalGiving, I came across an amazing organization called East Meets West Foundation carrying out extraordinary work in Vietnam. East Meets West(EMW) strives to improve health, education, and economic conditions in an effort to eradicate poverty and to help Vietnamese people to achieve self-sufficiency. Of their many efforts, their Dental Program really impressed me and reminded me of my conversation with the dental student from India. Through EMW’s website, I learned that dental disease is the most widespread ailment in the world, with over 5 billion people suffering from its effects and with little resources devoted to this disease that threatens the quality of life of children and adults. Remembering the pain I experienced before having my wisdom teeth removed, I can only start to empathize with people who lack access to dental care but have daily toothaches.

East Meets West Dental Program began in 1996, about eight years after EMW was founded, with a three-member team providing emergency, corrective, and preventive services to about 2,500 children per year. After an increase in funding, including a grant from the United States Agency for International Development, East Meets West has been able to reach over 75,000 children to which they have provided nearly 300,000 free dental services. Services are facilitated through the Tuong Lai School for Disabled Children in Da Nang City.

Not only does East Meets West provide free dental services to the population in close proximity to their clinic, but with over 100 volunteers coming from all over the world every year, they continue to take a mobile clinic to rural areas in Vietnam and they are now expanding their efforts throughout Southeast Asia. In addition to providing dental services, EMW develops comprehensive strategies to address situations of extreme poverty and poor access to health services. Lead by this strategy, EMW provides clean water and sanitation, education, medical, and climate change adaptation programs. This array of widespread programs and services provides an all-inclusive approach to serving populations in need. With local expertise in Vietnam, EMW highlights how a mixed approach that is both culturally sensitive but also allows for the use of foreign expertise and resources can positively affect tens of thousands of people in our global community.

Twenty-four companies and organizations were represented spanning a total of eight categories, including software, medical devices, consumer products, and, yes, social entrepreneurship.

Pamela Hawley was selected as a finalist after a robust vetting process and several in-person interviews from the Ernst & Young team for her ability to match business acumen with an innovative product. Pamela Hawley received recognition for her outstanding work pioneering a business for social good.

In the social entrepreneur category, Pamela was selected along with Steven K Morgan of Wildlands, Inc., which works on restoring and protecting wetlands, as well as Scott Johnson, who won the award through his work with The Myelin Repair Foundation — a non-profit research organization focused on developing treatment for multiple sclerosis.

The banquet honoring the entrepreneurs lasted several hours and included videos showcasing the businesses and entrepreneurs. Several of the UniversalGiving team attended as well as some KEI members.

UniversalGiving shared the spotlight with such notable entrepreneurs and fellow finalists as Kenneth Grossman from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and Kevin Surace from Serious Materials. The event just showed that Pamela can pioneer social good with the same entrepreneurial spirit as the best of them.

Looking for inspirational stories about changing the world?  Want a resource for easy ways to give?  Interested in finding a good way to volunteer?  We’re still happy to give you all that–but we’re on a new page now!  We changed our name and changed our web address.  We moved everything–posts, pages and comments–over to the new place, so from now on you can come look for us at:

www.philanthropost.wordpress.com

All you have to do is click the link above.  We look forward to seeing you over there!

by Anis Salvesen

The Commonwealth Club.  It sounds like some brick-walled, ivy covered institution where old people sit around and drink tea or smoke cigars.  It was really intriguing to me that they have a program called INFORUM is a division of The Commonwealth Club by and for people in their 20s and 30s, with a mission to inspire debate around civic issues. Imagine my excitement when I found out I could attend a forum there called “$10 Philanthropy: Change for Change in Ten Minutes.”

The best part?  The impressive lineup of speakers:  Darian Heyman (current Member, United Nations GAID High-Level Panel of Advisors & former executive director of the Craigslist Foundation), Premal Shah (President, Kiva),   Joe Engle ( Sales Associate, Network for Good ) and Jacob Colker, Co-founder and CEO, The Extraordinaries ).

If you have not read Part I, it’s not a problem.   These panelists have such great things to say, it’s like one of those really interesting, animated conversations where you don’t necessarily need to have been there from the beginning to become engaged.

Here is Part II:

You brought up the term “slacktivism,” Jacob. ..It’s really easy to do something that appears meaningful and whether or not it’s meaningful is up for debate. ..Doing something for 10 minutes is essentially meaningless, and people that are doing it are essentially slackers.       Do you agree or disagree?

Premal:  My view right now is that the enemy is disengagement, apathy, ignorance.  So many hours are spent playing video games than thinking about how to make the world a better place.  The view at Kiva is that we can give someone something even really small – for example, you can translate a profile that’s uploaded from Senegal in French to English. …Or..something really small and frictionless; that is so much better than you not having engaged.

In Wikipedia, are these slackers who just edit small little articles, or have they created an incredible public good? One out of every two hundred page loads on the internet is a Wikipedia page.  And it’s a nonprofit.   If we can give people really small ways to participate..you can see some really big change over time.

Darian:  It’s also issue-specific.  There may be certain issues that because a friend forwards me a petition, I’ll sign; but I’m not necessarily going to take a leadership role in it.  And there’s other issues..where I will step to the front.   The reality is it takes a mix of all of that from all of us to really make the world a better place.

Jacob:  Millenials, the largest generation in American history (75M) that were raised on texting, video games, these very quick experiences that they have.  With The Extraordinaries we approach it from the angle of if we can engage them..even for 3 or 4 minutes, our hope is that over time, that will be the gateway drug to enhance civic engagement and channel them to other opportunities for social good.

Let’s talk a little bit about innovation.  What are some of the innovations that organizations are doing that make it really easy for people to engage in a meaningful way? [Premal mentions e-mail signature lines]

Premal, we’ve talked a little bit about Kiva, and I just wonder if you can talk a little bit more…about kiva, what it’s about, how many people it’s helped.

Premal:  Kiva’s a website that allows you to make loans in $25 increments to developing world entrepreneurs.   And we just recently opened up here in the United States. .. It’s about three-and-a-half years old, and in that time about 500,000 people have made $80M in loans..to help out about 200,000 entrepreneurs in 50 countries.  The first year we raised $1M, and we do it every week now – one million dollars.  We don’t have a marketing budget; it’s just people telling people.

In terms of some of the innovations..a real frictionless, low barrier to entry kind of process. It doesn’t have to be about the money ; you can volunteer at Kiva by just translating a profile from Spanish to English.  You can change your signature line on your e-mail.  We want everyone to be involved and co-create this internet public good with us.

We think a lot about gaming mechanics, and how do we compete with video games, which, I think, is really the competition here.  How do we make this an addictive experience, that you would rather go to Kiva and surf around the website than play Solitaire on your..computer or World of Warcraft.   There’s a lot of that we still need to do.  But that’s where I think a lot of the innovation’s going to come from..transparency and gaming dynamic applied to fundraising.

What else is innovative out there?  What are unusual ways that other organizations are figuring this out. ..Maybe Jacob, you can talk a little bit about The Extraordinaries.

Jacob:  An excellent point is that the enemy is video games.  Just on government computers, we spend 9 billion hours a year playing Solitaire.  Ok. Solitaire.  In comparison, it only took 7 million [hours] to build the Empire State Building.  This is the kind of human energy we’re talking about.  We spend 4.6 hours a week playing mobile video games.  The point is, video games are fun and engaging, and there’s something you can feel rewarded from in a very short amount of time.

Our approach at The Extraordinaries is to look at all of the spare time we have – the 51 minutes we spend on public transportation to and from work, the 18 minutes you spend standing in an airport security line. ..We have all this spare time.  We..offer somebody the opportunity to pull out their phone and in a few moments engage with a cause or community..they care about.

I think the interesting thing all of you..are saying is this idea of meeting people where they’re at rather than trying to get people to come to you.  I think also of the social networks.  I wonder if there are examples of meeting people where they’re at.

Damian:  I can bring it into the real world as well as online marketing.  Every year I work with something called the Power To The Peaceful Festival here in San Francisco (coming up on September 12^th). ..It’s a huge free concert for peace and social justice.  For me, as opposed to meeting people where they’re at, it’s more about offering different options and going wider, but also deeper.  Just by coming to the festival, those 70,000 people are going to have their awareness heightened.  Then there’s going to be a subset of that group that want to engage on a deeper level.  That’s a more real world example.

On the online side, I work with a group called Project Ahimsa, which is a global effort to empower children through music.  We just launched our first benefit album, and now it’s up to #5 on the iTunes charts.  We just passed Bob Marley.  That is only really possible because of the tremendous viral marketing and people telling each other.  Some might call that “slacktivism.”  All people are doing is downloading an album, and ultimately that’s going to result in programs for poor children in the slums of India.  The main point is that every action counts, and in tandem, if we give people options to go wide as well as deep, it all really adds up.

What about my mother-in-law on Facebook?  Is anybody doing anything that could get her to use her Facebook page for something good?

Premal:  Well there’s Facebook Causes, which is a very interesting app.  Essentially if you back a cause..say Unicef, you can..show it on your page..and..very easily invite other people.  But what’s interesting about meeting people where they’re at is you make people feel good with quick feedback loops.  In the case of Facebook, they actually have leader boards so you can..beat your friends, or..see where you are; you’re a top fundraiser, or you’re a top recruiter for Unicef.  And you get quick updates on your impact or your lack of impact.  And I think that’s a really big part of what’s made that successful.

***                           ***                         ***         ***            ***                ***               ***                           ***                         ***         ***            ***                ***

There was a Q&A, and then the presenters were gracious enough to hang around for a bit for the audience to meet them.

Here’s what happened in my case:

Oh my god, I get to meet the Premal Shah!  Is my lipstick fine?  No wait, I have to focus on more serious preparation.  Aaahhhh!  I get to meet Premal!

So I walk over to the front of the room, where some of the panelists are holding court (not that any of them were arrogant).  Naturally Premal was popular, so I chatted with another attendee who it turns out recently wrote a book about volunteering.  Anyway, I realize the photo I took of the podium was rather dull, so maybe I could get a photo of Premal.  It seemed eerily crazy-celebrity fan-like to just snap his photo, so I decided to ask if we could take a picture together – which I now realize is not that much less crazed fan-like.

By Cheryl Mahoney

Just recently I wrote about how we all use the internet.  Well, I’m betting we all listen to music pretty often too (sometimes through the internet!)  But how often do you think about music and social change together?  Just as One Web Day thinks about the internet and social change, eTown thinks about music and social change.

eTown is an exciting community sharing music and ideas.  They combine a passion for music with a passion for social change.  Their mission is “to educate, entertain and inspire a diverse audience, through music and conversation, to create a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable world.”  Their weekly radio program is broadcast on more than 270 stations nationwide, and is available on the internet as well. 

I love the idea of creating a community around a common interest, like music.  People are very capable of getting very passionate about favorite bands, musicians and singers.  (I’m no exception.  You should hear me wax on about Michael Crawford some time–he’s amazing!)  But what I really love about eTown is that they don’t stop at the music–they make the community about something even bigger, not only about music but about creating change.

One way eTown celebrates social change is through their monthly E-Chievement Awards.  I am very proud to be able to say that UniversalGiving was chosen for this month’s E-Chievement Award!  This award celebrates people who are making a positive impact in their communities and beyond.  eTown also interviewed our founder and CEO, Pamela Hawley.  Her interview on eTown will be airing between August 26th and September 1st (dependent on schedules for local stations).  Visit eTown’s site to find out how to listen to the program, or if you just can’t wait, they already have Pamela’s interview up online.

So who’s your favorite musician?  And what’s your favorite cause?  Maybe there’s a way to combine the two.  Or visit UniversalGiving for great opportunities to spread social change with music.

It is no secret that boardrooms in America are not renowned for their diverse composition. But did you know that not only are many of the board members of the largest companies the same type of people (male, Caucasian, 55+), they are the same people?  Remember Enron back in 2001?  I found an article written in the aftermath of that scandal that cited the following statistic: “Eleven of the 15 largest companies, including Pfizer and Citigroup, have at least two board members who sit together on another board.” .

Unfortunately, lack of boardroom diversity continues to be an issue.  Not only were excessive homogeneity and board interlocks cited as factors in the events leading up to the Enron scandal, but they have also been shown to play key roles in more recent scandals.  A great article in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation from March 2009 actually stated the following:  “We find strong evidence that board interlocks are related to the spread of backdating [of employee stock options].    A firm is more likely to begin backdating option grants if the firm has a director who is a board member of another firm that previously backdated its stock options.”

The good news is, there’s at least one person doing something about board diversity.  Linda Bolliger is the founder of Boardroom Bound , which is a national public service program that delivers pre-trained diverse business leaders as candidates to companies for  board service. In the 1970s, Linda served as the first woman appointed to a cabinet-level position in an Illinois city government administration.  She and her program have received many awards.  

 The following is an interview :

You spoke of ‘the nexus between nonprofit and for-profit board service.’  Could you please expound upon that?

LB: Of course. Consider this: The majority of current board directors sitting on boards of for-profit companies actually first encountered governance during their nonprofit board service. 

How does Boardroom Bound recognize this nexus?

We received a grant from the Dunham Fund to develop a training program for nonproft organizations to help them increase their governance muscles. Boardology™ 100^© is the result. 

So you train leaders, giving them skills they can take to the non-profit boardroom and then translate those skills and experience to the for-profit world. What sorts of skills are more typically honed in the nonprofit arena?

LB:  Essentially we introduce the sequence concept to nonprofit Board Chairs and Elects. It’s oriented to their learning how to use governance and collaboration as tools for their group’s long term sustainability.

 Usually we think of the nonprofit sector as having something to learn from profitoriented businesses, but it seems it can also be the other way around.

 LB: Exactly! It’s a sequence. Nonprofits engaging in the governance paradigm we champion  will produce leaders who can, with appropriate training, successfully compete for corporate board service.

By Cheryl Mahoney

How much of your time do you spend on the internet?  Obviously some–you’re here, after all!  Personally, I’m on here eight hours a day for my job, and usually some time in the evening once I’m off of work too.    For me, the internet’s where I go when I’m communicating with a friend, looking up a random fact, trying to remember a quote, puzzling over where I’d seen that actor before, looking for movie times, needing directions, checking to see if my library books are overdue, looking at my credit card bill, wanting to feed the hungry with one click…and on and on and on.  I think we’re all a bit like that.  And mostly, we don’t think about it–I don’t, anyway.

But some people do.  The people over at One Web Day definitely do.  One Web Day is all about celebrating the openness and interconnectedness created by the internet, and the power of the web to transform the world.  An annual event on September 22, they consider themselves the Earth Day for the Internet.  Earth Day is all about bringing environmental concerns in front of the world.  One Web Day is intended to do the same for the internet.  They had events in thirty-four cities across the world last year, and they’re gearing up for this year–less than a month away!  The slogan is “One Web.  For All” and the goal is to empower everyone to access the internet and to use it freely.

I admit, most of my examples up above of how I use the web are not really going to change the world.  Not as individual actions.  But it’s the cumulative that counts.  It’s the spread of information, and the spread of connections.  I can look up a random quote or a fact I’m curious about.  Suppose a child in Africa could do the same.  One fact won’t change her life, but the ability to access knowledge and information will.  It’s about the freedom of information to spread.  Twitter became an important spread of information during the aftermath of elections in Iran.  Blogging has become an incredible tool for the freedom of communication.  Sure, a lot of the internet is frivolous or unimportant, but not all of it–and sometimes the parts that seem frivolous are important after all.  Besides, even if only 10% of what happens on the internet actually matters (I’m making this figure up), that’s all right.  Because the internet opens up endless possibilities, and 10% of infinity is still infinity.

So if you use the internet (and clearly you do!) and want to celebrate the possibilities, visit One Web Day’s site.  You can join their network and look for groups in your city, or read the blog for stories about supporters, and to learn how you can get involved too.  If you’d like to help spread the internet and ensure one web for all, come visit UniversalGiving.  You can sponsor one month of internet access for a classroom in rural China (just $15!), or help World Computer Exchange enhance internet connections in developing countries, or even volunteer in Ethiopia teaching children to use computers.  Imagine the possibilities.

$10 Philanthropy: Change for Change in Ten Minutes (Part 1)

by Anis Salvesen

The Commonwealth Club.  It sounds like some brick-walled, ivy covered institution where old people sit around and drink tea or smoke cigars.  It was really intriguing to me that they have a program called INFORUM is a division of The Commonwealth Club by and for people in their 20s and 30s, with a mission to inspire debate around civic issues. Imagine my excitement when I found out I could attend a forum there called “$10 Philanthropy: Change for Change in Ten Minutes.”

The best part?  The impressive lineup of speakers:  Darian Heyman (current Member, United Nations GAID High-Level Panel of Advisors & former executive director of the Craigslist Foundation), Premal Shah (President, Kiva),   Joe Engle ( Sales Associate, Network for Good ) and Jacob Colker, Co-founder and CEO, The Extraordinaries ).

Here is my adventure that evening:

After hopping around the lobby first on one foot, then the other, trying to change out of my tennis shoes and into my heels, I headed up to the Commonwealth Club.  I’m not sure if my pulse was racing from having run-walked for 25 minutes to get there in time, or if it was that I was really excited about the event.

So how was it?  The moderator  (Madeline Stanionis ) was excellent!  She asked some really great questions, and I jotted some of them down.   The answers given were more elaborate obviously, but I am sharing what I found most interesting.

What are some of the ways that you have seen people engage with causes?  What does the internet bring to philanthropy?

Darian:  All too often when people talk about philanthropy, really they’re talking about making donations – and certainly that is a lynch pin to the successful work of any nonprofit.  But beyond that, when you’re volunteering, when you’re joining a board…those are all acts of philanthropy.

As we move forward, there’s an increasingly large number of options in terms of how we can give back. For example, there’s a group called Full Circle Fund which practices “engaged philanthropy.”  The idea is not just giving financial capital, but also intellectual capital, social capital, political capital.

Premal:  In the case of Kiva, it’s lending, and it’s a 0% interest loan you’re making to an entrepreneur.   And when I think of online philanthropy, I think it makes it much more transparent .  In the case of Kiva, you actually get to see the end entrepreneur and where your money is going.  Contrast that to putting a check in the mail to a large organization.

Jacob: One of the most exciting things the internet has done to philanthropy is just tear down barriers.  It used to be geographic barriers .   …   Through the internet we can connect…people – not only their checkbook but also their intelligence, their passion.

How do organizations actually keep people engaged when people have so many options?

Joe:   One way that nonprofits can keep donors engaged is that they collect e-mail addresses and then also just put them in certain groups and then be really mindful of people’s time.

Jacob:  I will pull from the 2005 and 2007 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that…only 26% of the [U.S.] population actually does it [volunteers].   We have this notion that it’s the people’s fault,that we need to figure out how to get them to feel guilty about coming in and volunteering. ….

The key to keeping people and keeping them coming back is to understand your audience.  And if your audience is somebody who has to work 60 hours a week, has kids, has to run errands..who’s going to night school, four hours is really, really precious.

You have to understand your audience [bears repeating] and the limitations that they have in their lives to engaging. ..  Then you can start thinking about how to keep people engaged.

Damian:  I looked at that same study and…the average contribution of a volunteer in the US last year was 52 hours.  If you look at the increase in volunteerism over the last 20 years…for adults it’s up about a third, but for youth it’s up 200%. So volunteerism is definitely on the rise.

An interesting factoid in there is that In California they surveyed older adults who volunteer, and they found that adults who volunteer actually had about a  44% lower mortality rate.  So volunteer, you’ll  live longer.

[Back to keeping people engaged in philanthropy]

To me the main thing is its not about an extraordinary opportunity; it’s about a relevant opportunity.   It’s about connecting  with people.   And it’s about managing expectations and communicating those clearly.

***                           ***                         ***         ***            ***                ***               ***                       ***

There was a Q&A, and then the presenters were gracious enough to hang around for a bit for the audience to meet them.

Here’s what happened in my case:

Oh my god, I get to meet the Premal Shah!  Is my lipstick fine?  No wait, I have to focus on more serious preparation.  Aaahhhh!  I get to meet Premal!

So I walk over to the front of the room, where some of the panelists are holding court (not that any of them were arrogant).  Naturally Premal was popular, so I chatted with another attendee who it turns out recently wrote a book about volunteering.  Anyway, I realize the photo I took of the podium was rather dull, so maybe I could get a photo of Premal.  It seemed eerily crazy-celebrity fan-like to just snap his photo, so I decided to ask if we could take a picture together – which I now realize is not that much less crazed fan-like.

Anyway, he was very gracious, and to my surprise he said “You’re from UniversalGiving, right?”   Wow!  He remembered!  Of course I had asked a question during the Q&A session, and I had said I was Anis from UniversalGiving, so I wonder if at this point I’m insulting the guy’s intelligence.  Anyway, Premal went on about Pamela and how she had helped him so much in the past.  I have no doubt of this, but I was impressed by the humility he exuded.  I mean, he’s the president of KIVA!  I’ve met guys who simply run a hamburger joint with more attitude.  It was a great evening, and I came away glad that it had not only met but surpassed my expectations.   Stay tuned for Part II!  These guys are just treasure troves of knowledge.

by Anis Salvesen

If you go to the Harvard Business blog, you will see a great article by Alexandra Samuel called “Don’t Keep Up With Social Technology”.  I encourage you to read the actual blog post, but basically she talks about how keeping up with all of the latest technology in social media is not the answer.  She has this great example of going to Ikea with a friend and being reminded by this friend, “there’s no combination of boxes that’s going to turn you into an organized person.”

Below is a comment we posted to Alexandra’s article.  We are extremely curious; what are your thoughts?    And before I forget, thanks for reading this post.   Bolded words allow you to skim.

What a great post.  Just this morning I was talking with the founder of SHARED, Inc. about getting a Twitter account. I used to work in the corporate world, and there I never had to think about such choices; there was an entire tech department and a marketing department who stayed on top of the latest technologies for the rest of us.  Now that I work at a non-profit (UniversalGiving), it’s much more of an “issue,” if you will.

Non-profits have fewer resources to dedicate to learning all about new technologies and to then actually implement them.  Should you have a volunteer update your Twitter account, or should they spend their time keeping up your Facebook Page?  Do you want to have your marketing team post to your organization’s blog, or is it better if they try to get your organization featured on a great site like TechCrunch?

The decision-making process is further hindered in smaller non-profits by the fact that the person who ultimately makes these decisions, or at least sets the framework by which to make these decisions, is an already over-worked CEO.  This is especially true when the CEO is an entrepreneur.  It’s true that these CEO’s have to trust their team, but at the end of the day, it’s their (the CEO’s) organization.  It’s their sweat, their dreams that are on the line.

Another thing is that most of these entrepreneurial CEO’s, these social entrepreneurs, are aware of the fact that they have limited resources.  They have a perhaps unspoken fear of lagging behind the corporate world.  It’s too much of a stretch to say that these CEOs think that if they don’t keep up with the latest technology, people they are trying to help will pay the price.  That is to say, that if they fail to move on a hot new trend, X-amount of children they could otherwise have saved will die.  As I said, that would be an exaggeration.

But I do think there is the feeling that they somehow owe it to these people in need to keep up on all of the latest trends.  Their work is their passion, their life, the embodiment of their values, and any failure to stay at the forefront of technology is a failure on their part to walk the talk.

The idea that quality not quantity is what matters, I think applies here.  It’s exactly what you say in your post about “choosing technologies that support the goals and priorities that matter to you.” 

Alexandra will be responding to these comments on her Social Signal site

Who doesn’t love games?  I know I do.  I consciously avoid video games because I just don’t have that kind of time, but a free online game to spend five minutes on when I need a brief break from thinking…perfect.  And if it’s a game that, say, feeds the hungry while I play, better and better.  FreeRice.com and FreePoverty.com are games like that.  They’re also not what this post is about, because I’ve already written about them.  This post is inspired by a blog post I saw on Social Edge, titled Revisiting Social Games, written by Charles “Hipbone” Cameron.

Cameron discusses the idea of social games, games that are designed around social concerns.  He provides links to a few, then encourages people to share their experiences playing them.  He also links to Games for Change, a website that provides games on pretty much every subject of social concern I can think of: global warming, violence in Darfur, the problem of obesity, homelessness, refugees…if you can name it, it’s probably here.

In the interest of research, naturally I tried a few games.  First, Nuclear Weapons: The Peace Dove Game.  You try to disarm the countries with nuclear weapons by deducing from the facts provided which country is being referenced, and then launching a Peace Dove to the right country to disarm their weapons.  With cute cartoons and doves with personalities, this is a fun game–and I found out there’s a lot I don’t know about the nuclear weapons situation in the world.  I did pretty well on this one anyway–I didn’t manage to completely disarm the world, but I don’t feel too worried about France and the United Kingdom having a few hundred weapons each.  If you play, be warned: it’s hard to tell at first that some of the European countries are options!

Next, I tried Climate Challenge, where you play the president of the European Nations and make policy choices that affect climate change–but you have to be mindful of your approval rating and your budget too.  You apparently have a very long term of office, because you can make decisions for an entire century.  I only played for twenty years, because I realized by then that if I didn’t stop playing, I’d never get anything else done!

Last game I tried: I love Third World Farmer.  Just like it sounds, you play a family of low-income farmers.  You can make choices about crops to plant, animals to buy, and how you care for your family.  You make choices for each year, see the results of your decisions, and then move on to the next year based on those results.  Crops are better some years than others, sometimes illness strikes or your chickens die off.  I swiftly discovered that, most years, I could afford to plant crops OR buy medicine OR send the kids to school.  I’m sure this is a sadly true situation.

I have to admit, these games don’t actually meet my above-statement about being a break from thinking.  That’s kind of the point.  They’re fun to play and they feel like a break, but they’re making you think too.  And while they’re mostly not feeding the hungry while you play, they can teach you something about why people are hungry, or make you think a new way about how to deal with climate change.  So that seems to me to still be working for social change–or, to be more accurate, playing for social change.  And if Third World Farmer ends up inspiring people to donate to help a farmer…all the better.

UPDATE: After I finished work yesterday, I spent an hour and a half of my free time playing Third World Farmer.  It ended tragically a couple of times, but on my third try I am happy to report that we successfully lifted the family out of poverty.  By planting corn and wheat we scraped along and started making a little better income.  I was able to send the children to school most years, so that the son had seven years of education and the daughter nine (he was a bit older so we needed him on the farm for a couple of years while she could stay in school).  The mother fell badly ill one year but we made enough on the crops to pay for medicine, though it took almost half our income (and no one went to school that year).  Eventually, we started to make a bit more money, and could buy chickens, and then pigs, and eventually cows.  We built a well one year which saved us when there was a drought, and when things got really good we were able to buy a tractor, and fund a clinic and a school.  I played for twenty years and successfully arranged marriages for both children.  All in all, I think my third world farmer succeeded in life, by providing for his children and improving his community–his grandchildren would find it much easier to get an education and obtain medicine, thanks to the clinic and the school.  One thing I found interesting: by the time we could build the school and the clinic, we didn’t really need them.  The children were grown, and we could afford medicine.  There isn’t a community-aspect inherent in the game, but I’m sure that’s the implication.  One prosperous farmer can then make the situation better for his less fortunate neighbors.

If you’re not playing this game, you really should be.  It’s heartbreaking when it goes badly.  One bad turn of luck and it’s almost impossible to recover.  But it’s exhilirating when it goes right, and you watch the family grow increasingly prosperous.  Which direction it goes is largely luck.  Every year some “Event” happens, usually bad ones (occasionally a bumper crop).  If all the cattle dies off and you didn’t happen to have cows, you don’t have a problem.  But if you invest all your money in corn and then a corn blight destroys the crops, you will probably never recover.  The sad thing is, I expect that’s accurate.  But the good thing is, owning a few chickens or a cow, or having a local clinic, really can turn a family’s prospects around.  So check out Third World Farmer; it’ll be fun, and maybe it’ll make you think about how you can help a farmer too.