In the last update I mentioned the desire to create some income generating project to help support the families and over the past few weeks, a small group of determined volunteers has been forming to make sure this project comes to fruition.

Ben Viapiana draws the outline of the first sample notebook.

Among the volunteers is Ben Viapiana, who runs a company designing custom jeans in Bangkok. While jeans may be his forte, Ben has a gift for designing and making all sorts of things. Over the weekend he gave the first vocational training workshop to two of the families.

We provided all the materials and Ben taught them book binding, starting with how to make a simple notebook. Other volunteers participated learning the skill along with the families and helping make sure everyone understood and followed the instructions. The result was a few pleather notebooks and a homework task requiring everyone to craft something more difficult before the next workshop.

Book binding 101: A vocational workshop to give craft making skills to vulnerable families.

While the end goal is to eventually generate funds to support the families, there are other important benefits to this sort of project. For instance, the project would provide families with some sort of skill they could take with them once resettled in another country. There’s also the psycho-social benefit of having a sense of purpose and being rallied behind a task that will serve to improve the mental health among these families who aren’t allowed to work to support themselves.

[See more pictures on the In Search of Sanuk Facebook page]

There’s still a long way to go to make this into something that pumps funds into the project, but I’m happy to have moved a few baby steps closer and thankful to everyone working to help us create some sustainability.

-Dwight

Social entrepreneurship has a home on many websites on the web, so why are entrepreneurs still sleeping outside? If we really believe they have a role to play in changing development and reforming how we conceptualize philanthropy, then we have to respond to the dangers of being internet homeless.

Can you spare some change?

I mean it’s cold out and I can’t even buy a retweet.

Do you know what it’s like trying to keep these ideas for change warm while you walk by overlooking me?!

Enough is enough.

LISTEN UP! Hands off the keyboard and where I can see them.

You MUST create a place where our community can thrive.

Don’t allow change to be held hostage. Here are my demands:

• Balance Content with Community – If we really wanted to encourage good, we would not only equip people with great content, but balance it with peer to peer interaction. Writing a blog and inviting users to comment does not constitute a discussion. We need more dynamic content shaped with and for the participants. This means creating places where people can meet, collaborate and complain.  Instead, the over emphasis on content leaves us buried in reading and hurting for connections with fellow change makers.

• Let Me Plug & Play – We’re social entrepreneurs. Why isn’t it easier to plug into your site and promote what I’m already doing offline? There should be a framework we can use to celebrate our ideas, discuss our cause, and utilize tools to better our enterprises. Furthermore, sites should be more social media friendly. We have blogs, the obligatory facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube, and endless other accounts we can’t remember we signed up for. Remember entrepreneur is also slang for over-worked. Updating all of that, enacting a business plan that saves the world, and transferring our content to your site isn’t realistic.

• Be Less Trendy & More Practical – Everything trendy is not helpful. I’m all for promoting social entrepreneurship, but we have to evaluate and balance the content we’re publishing. Why is there so little content that gets us from point A to B? We can’t overlook the process. I’m sure I’d get internet famous if only wrote blogs with titles like, “Top 10 Books on Social Entrepreneurship” or “Top Reasons To Spend Your Startup Budget on a Flight to Our Conference.” Sure the site gets traffic, but I’m not any closer to finding funding for my project or bringing my design to the market. Nope. How can I progress when most of my resources are telling me, “What you’re doing is cute, but read the required reading and pay to come to our conference—THEN you can be one of us.” As strongly as we promote the field, we should be making sure we’re ready to nurture newcomers by helping them understand the process required to make their social venture successful and ushering them into the community mentioned above.

• Keep It Real–Real Inclusive – People who are successful already are NOT the only ones who deserve your attention. Focusing only on success stories neglects that we’re a motley crew of everything from PhDs to wikipedia degrees and doesn’t necessarily reflect all the realities of entrepreneurship. Sometimes being an entrepreneur sucks. Who can you expect to help when you can only grasp the puffs of lint in your pocket and the smell of ramen makes you nauseated? We should be honest about struggles and failures as much as we flaunt the triumphs. When you make a place for people to be honest about their experience, your online community will thrive.

Spare change. Don’t let “friendly little startups” like mine, turn into “friendly little stickups.” Help us change the world and I promise nobody will get hurt.

~Dwight

The Question: What would happen if you gave kids living in poverty the ability to blog to the world? That’s exactly what Kristina Rosinsky wondered while she volunteered for the Undugu Society of Kenya, hearing the stories of her new Kenyan friends firsthand. (The Undugu Society is doing other great things to empower Nairobi’s communities, so take a minute and look around their website.)

The Belief: If people weren’t ignorant to what life was like for poor Kenyans they’d do something to help change it. Kristina began the Digital Storytelling Project, teaching youth to manage wordpress blogs and take photographs of their lives. She was successful and you can get the links to all the student’s blogs here.

The Growth: Returning home meant the work was just beginning. Now Kristina is back in DC and was recently recognized by The People’s Voice for her work simulating inner city Kenyan life with students in DC. Click here to go to the article.

So it was even pretty easy to track down Kristina’s predeparture plan on youtube. Look back at her paper thoughts and find some inspiration. Be confident that paper dreams can materialize.

“Stop doubting and take out some paper.”

~Dwight

• Start with the ‘Man in the Mirror’ - Now you know which MJ song was my favorite. The role of philanthropy is no longer only in the hands of the super rich and influential. We have to recognize ourselves as agents of change. It starts with you! When individual effort combines with that of large organizations it will no longer take a millennium to create basic levels of development on this planet.
• Moonwalk the line - Before you put your startup on the web, register as a non-profit, or whatever your goals are. You need to identify the meeting point where all you are meets with all your cause means to you. Found it? Could you moonwalk on it? Capture it, familiarize yourself with it and make sure that’s what you’re giving people in your messages.
• Consistency is King – Finally, if we didn’t learn anything else from the King of Pop, simply be yourself. People and forms of media would like to split you and classify you, missing who you are as a whole. Be yourself in all your messages, not only who the mediums push you to be. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t adapt for your audience, BUT it does mean that you shouldn’t adapt for EVERY audience.

These tips should be helpful on your path to properly brand yourself and your cause. Next week, as a bonus, I’ll be featuring an interview with Tom Positit who’s behind the project The Global Expedition for the World’s Greatest King. He’ll share some tips from his project and discuss how he’s putting his accomplishments to work helping others. Thanks for reading.

“Dream big, work smart, start local.”

~Dwight

Blame it on the ubiquity of advertising that has made every inch of public space available for purchase. Blame it on being submerged in a tourism dependent economy, overrun with hedonistic invitations. Blame it on our personal laziness. Regardless of where it feels most comfortable for you to pile up the blame, we need to realize too many of us are over-entertained and under-challenged.

This week as I listened to the founders of Imagine Thailand talk about the conflict in Southern Thailand. I couldn’t help but wonder why the situation had never been explained to me with such depth before. I’ve lived in Bangkok for a total of two years and I’ve been educating myself about everything Thai, including the language, for nearly three years. Yet Cavelle Dove’s description of the conflict blatantly exposed my minuscule knowledge and all the superficial explanations I had ever been given. Am I surrounded by heartless people or are they just as poorly informed? Are they just too distracted to care?

Perhaps poorly informed is less harsh than over entertained and under challenged. However, the latter most accurately explains my experiences. I know how long I desired so strongly to be a part of something meaningful that I was willing to join any number of organizations to feel I was contributing something. That’s because months of doing everything else the city had to offer left me tired, unfulfilled, and dejected. Yup, it’s the same miserable feeling you get after overdoing it at an expensive hotel buffet. That was my experience in Bangkok, and the seeds of how I came to begin my search for sanuk.

Living abroad has given me a more pronounced understanding of the quote, “The opposite of love isn’t hate, but indifference.” Especially when a Thai friend remarked, “Well Dwight, I’m really surprised because I grew up here and I’ve never been to a slum before.” Again I asked myself, are we really so out of touch? Is it our environment? How often are we really given opportunities to give back? Do we even know how to help people or how much fun it can be? Are we just avoiding a challenge?

Consider what avenues exist to discuss helping the less fortunate or marginalized in your community. What are they? Are you a part of the discussion? I fear so few of us are not even having these discussions. When they do occur, it happens in niches so isolated that they’re inaccessible to both other groups having similar discussions or people who are not members of these segmented communities.

It’s my passion to change this where I can.

Tonight In Search of Sanuk is hosting a party called LUSH to raise funds for the urban garden project. As I prepare, I wonder whether or not I should really have to get people drunk to convince them to give to a good cause. Whether we’ll ever stand united to battle the forces keeping us complacent. Whether one day we’ll plead with our friends to understand how tightly linked our well being is to those we’re indifferent to.

“Wakeup. Put your hand in. Be thrilling.”

~Dwight

The Community is Growing – Through the internet, travel, and your help spreading the word we’re gradually growing. Please get involved no matter where you are by joining us on facebook or by sharing great content on twitter. If you have written or done something that fits here please contact us so we can share.

Splintering Your Brand – The conclusion of this series is coming up, where I’ll give some simple, practical tips to help in your project management. As a bonus, I’ll be sharing an interview with Tom Potisit of the Global Expedition for the World’s Greatest King. After flying around the world Tom recently held an exhibition to sale his photographs. Hear how his project developed and how he’ll use the money he raised to reinvest into his country.

Microphilanthropy – Before the end of the month I plan to announce our own microphilanthropy project. This means we will be directly helping people and reporting the results here. Donations will be accepted on the website (tax-deductible for US residents). This project will be our own version of the 100 Friends project. This is a big step and we’ll need you to play a role.

The Urban Garden Project – This project is moving along. We have already raised about 6000b ($200 US) through our May charity tweetup event. The next big event is LUSH, a poolside dance party at the Fraser Suites Sukumvit on June 19th. We’ve had some obstacles overcoming the issue of limited space for making a garden accessible in community centers and slums. BUT we’re persistent and we’re engaging more people on this project to find a way to make it happen (If it was easy, someone would have already done it).

Washington Leadership Academy – I’m speaking next week in Bangkok to encourage students to get active helping people. In addition to my lecture they’ll visit the UN and some other ngo’s and non profits. After a few days they’ll have a chance to put what they’ve learned in action and I’ll tag along for their projects outside the city. Should be fun and I will report back more to let you know how it goes.

“Dream big, work smart, start local.”

~Dwight