It is an absolute privilege and honor to be in a place where you can affect someone’s life meaningfully. I can tell you that from my personal experience.
Many of us think that not everybody can do something meaningful because in our world almost all the measurements come in $$$. By the end of this blog post, I will show you how to influence a change without money involved.
Here is what I think, and I encourage you to share your opinion with me:
Every morning I wake up and turn on my computer to check what is going on in my country and world wide. I am sure that many of you have similar habits.
Browsing through headlines I can learn things like: “Number of people shot in a crossfire in X country”, “New victim found murdered by a serial killer”, “Vandals trash the schoolyard”, “Mr. X bought new Ferrari”, “X wears a watch/dress/purse that costs insane amount of money“, and etc.
Yes, of course these news put me in a negative mood. There are so many extremes out there. Someone is shot, economy is in crisis, people are homeless and hungry, students cannot find jobs, someone is extremely rich and appears as if he/she doesn’t care about the poor…and yet it seems that there are no news about positive things happening around us.
We are in tough times, trying to break through, but it seems to me that all the good news don’t even stand a chance to reach us because of the amount of bad news happening and being pushed on top of news feed. This almost made us believe that there is nothing good out there. I know you know this is not true. I understand that we need to be aware of the danger around us (murderers, job layoffs, crisis, etc), but we should also be aware that there are many people working day and night to help others, unselfishly. Everyday some person does something inspiring and good. Wouldn’t you want to know more about it?
Out of this situation a new trend was born.
Talking about charitable giving became a taboo in some countries. Many started believing that we should not talk about it publicly. They say:
If you are doing it, do it from the heart and do it privately. Otherwise you are only doing it for the sake of your PR.
We at the #NDF can tell you that we thought the same for many years. We were helping kids gain access to the good health care. We were helping athletes and sport clubs, monasteries, and cities damaged in flood. We did plenty of things, but we did not speak about them publicly. I wonder how many smiles news about our doings would have evoked, if we only shared them with you. How many people would have been inspired to do something similar?
Unfortunately, because there is very little said about charitable giving in media, we tend to believe that it is for a good reason. It is not! Scandal, pain, sex, violence sells. We learned that lesson.
Why should it be more normal to read in newspapers how much money one has,what one owns, where one goes for vacation, and so on, than about someone doing a good deed and helping another human being?
People are ok to talk about their heritage and wealth, but charitable giving for them is something very private and not to be talked about. I really believe it shouldn’t be that way. Everything in moderation of course, but not to talk about it at all is a bit too extreme, don’t you think?.
We need to beat this trend. If charity foundations can talk about it, private individuals should do it,too. At the end of the day, we don’t have to wait for somebody else to do something. Each and every one of us can make a difference – and talk about it to inspire others to join him!
If we start demanding more positive news, we will get them. If things like this happen more in our community, we will read about them. If these news generate so many clicks, and so much attention – these news will be the first ones to pop on the top of your news feed!
It’s a very straightforward strategy that we can implement. Then, charitable giving would not be such a taboo. It will be a normal thing that happens everywhere around us.
It will become something that defines us. We will be less selfish. We will be more team oriented. We will influence the mood of the society.
We would be waking up with a smile on our faces, reading about good things in this world.
So next morning when you browse through news, make sure you find the news about somebody doing a good deed, helping another person, or even the whole community. And please, click on that news, leave a comment, and share it on your Twitter and/or Facebook account. Invite as many people to do the same. Let’s start our days with good, positive and inspiring news!
Remember what we always say at #NDF?
DREAM BIG!
Here is my big dream.
Let me know what you think, I enjoy reading your thoughts.
