Before I Die: Reclaiming Urban Aspiration

We love the work of artist, designer and TED Fellow Candy Chang. Today, we caught up with her at TED 2011, where she shared her brilliant new project in New Orleans: Before I Die I Want To — an abandoned house turned into a giant chalkboard, on which people share their deepest existential aspirations.

I never expected such an amazing outpouring of responses so quickly. Within 24 hours, the entire wall was completely filled out. And the responses range from humorous to overwhelmingly thoughtful — from ‘be a YouTube sensation’ to ‘go 200 mph’ to ‘be completely myself.’ I hear that people are gathering at the house and it’s stopping traffic. I’m blown away.” ~ Candy Chang

The notion of turning neglected space into an active invitation to engage with your community and get to know your neighbors is a wonderful embodiment of enlightened urbanism. What’s more, it’s a reminder that not all meaningful social platforms are accessed through a screen — an inspired antidote to the Foursquarification of urban social quasi-interaction.

For live coverage of TED 2011 this week, follow our Twitter feed and check Brain Pickings nightly for exclusive photos and speaker quotes. And don’t miss our primer of 5 must-read books by TED 2011 speakers.

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Pencils of Promise: Grassroots School-Building

How to give and own at the same time, or why Facebook is the new Peace Core.

In an ideal world, an invisible hand would be balancing the supply-demand ratio of help for humanity’s problems. The world, however, is far from ideal and we’re faced with more challenges than help is readily available for. And when help does present itself, it’s mostly in the form of donations — which often lack the immediacy of more hands-on approaches that give the help-giver a sense of ownership over the problem, in turn infecting the helpee with this we-can-solve-it resolve and unleashing a chain reaction of empowerment.

That’s exactly the kind of thinking that inspired Pencils of Promise — a powerful grassroots movement that seeks to solve the global education crisis from the bottom up and inside out. The nonprofit is 100% volunteer and its primary goal is to build schools and related facilites across the developing world, but it also embodies something we celebrate here at Brain Pickings — the cross-pollination of skills and perspectives — by empowering people to contribute whatever they are best at and cover different facets of the problem, rather than merely making impersonal and distanced donations.

The project began in 2008, when founder Adam Braun, fresh out of college himself, set out to build a single school in Laos. He put $25 into a bank account and asked friends to contribute however much they could. Little did he anticipate that in a little over a year, they would’ve raised $200,000 through the donations of thousands of individuals and over 150 volunteers would’ve joined the movement.

Our biggest commitment is to sustainability, which means PoP schools aren’t gifted but instead created by the community itself. The entire village helps builds their own school, leading to true ownership and a lasting commitment to their children’s educational future. ~ Adam Braun, Founder, Executive Director

Granted, as much as we’d want to, not all of us can drop our responsibilities and head East to build schools. But here’s how you can help:

Last December, Pencils of Promise won $25,000 through the Chase Community Giving Campaign on Facebook, which made them eligible for the million-dollar grand grant. And because the competition is user-driven, your vote can help tip the scale in the winning direction.

To sweeten the deal, Pencils of Promise is also using a voting system to decide which country to build schools in next — a little something they call “democratic social giving.” And in light of last week’s Haiti colossal earthquake disaster, PoP have just vouched to donate at least $100,000 towards youth-oriented initiatives in Haiti if they win the $1MM grant — a massive gesture of karmic kindness.

So go ahead and cast your vote for PoP in the Chase competition before Friday, when the voting closes — it’s a small effort on your part that can have momentous impact on entire communities. Which certainly beats another mindless round of FarmVille.

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The Transformative Power of Personal Projects

Time-stretching, self-funding, and why you should never underestimate grassroots creativity.

Today’s short-and-sweet is a reminder that personal projects done for passion, not profit, often take on a life of their own and end up resulting it creative and professional growth you could’ve never foreseen — take it from Ji Lee, Creative Director of Google Creative Labs, who masterminded the brilliant Bubble Project.

His talk at Behance’s 99% (one of our top 10 creative cross-disciplinary conferences) is a lovely testament to the transformative power of creative endeavors.

Instead of creating a project for myself, and just showing off, creating a project for other people to participate and collaborate instantly gains a sense of scale, and a sense of depth, and a sense of reach.

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