Let’s ignore that for a moment and watch this video:

When I started this project, I was advocating that we need to change the conversation about global poverty. That means we need to move away from controlled charity messages that are about guilting us into donating and disconnecting us from those we want to help.

The fact that there is now a charity director (Scott Harrison) preaching the same thing just blows my mind. And, I can’t commend him enough for having the guts to share this failure with us. I’ve been talking a lot about transparency – it doesn’t get more transparent than publicizing your failures for the world to see.

I haven’t worked with Charity: Water (yet) but let me tell you what I think will happen based on my own experiences. First, existing donors who see this will admire Scott’s honesty and transparency. Some of them will actually even donate more. That’s actually what has happened with me whenever I’ve talked & tweeted about my mistakes & failures.

Secondly, and most importantly, people on the ground will respect Charity: Water even more. Villagers aren’t dumb – they know when a charity wants to hide failures from the public. If the people Scott encounters are anything like the villagers I’ve encountered – they will respect him more for keeping the cameras rolling during this failure.

It will be respect well earned. And something worth supporting.

P.S. As a note to big NGO professionals who remind me that Charity: Water is small scale. I’d like to point out that, Charity: Water has been growing at an astronomical rate year-after-year. This is a growth during a bad economy no less! If you don’t think Charity: Water isn’t in this to scale even larger – keep watching them.

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Young Mother Stands with Her Child after Cyclone Aila Hit

Let me introduce you to this young mother I met in Galachipa, Bangladesh. This photo was taken just after Cyclone Aila – you can see that part of her house’s wall is missing. Trust me, I don’t bring this up as a downer.

After I met her, I explained to her what I was doing: that I’m not a charity official or employee – I’m just a guy. And, with my camera and camcorder, she could send a message to all my friends around the world.

I asked her: what does she want people outside of Bangladesh to know? What single message would be the most important to send? After I heard what she had to say, I knew I could never release the message.

She made a message with the names of specific individuals and groups who she felt were mishandling people’s donations. She urged people not to donate through these methods – because it would never reach her.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. And I mention this because of a blog post written by a friend and aid worker whom I have a great deal of respect for.

While I agree with much of what he said, this one passage sticks out the most:

I want to just remind folks of the risks of observer bias- that being that when you rock up to Village X with a notepad, or a camera, your very presence affects the answers that will be given. Community members may lack resources, and even education, but they’re not stupid. When a donor representative like myself or Shawn asks them a question, they will always give the answer that makes it most likely that they will receive more funds. If they turn around and complain about the quality of aid, they know there’s a risk that the donors in question may write off the village as a failed project and move on. Big smiles and thank-yous are far more likely to make a donor feel good and give more- and they know this.

I mention this because, for me, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Click the jump to find out why.

Insights of a “Bideshi-Deshi”

I’m what you call a “third culture kid”: I’ve been born and raised in North America but my parents often took me back to their homeland (Bangladesh). So my upbringing has neither been exclusively Western nor exclusively Bangladeshi. I’m a cultural mutt. I call it being “uncultured”.

The result is that, on the ground, I’m given the respect afforded to a “bideshi” (a foreigner) but, at the same time, villagers are just as frank with me as they are a “deshi” (a native). And when I mention I’m not an NGO employee I get a level of candor that neither a bideshi-only nor a deshi-only would get.

People seem to just pour their hearts out to me about their frustrations with aid. Every village I’ve gone to, people have given me a laundry list of complaints about aid, NGOs, and specific charities. Some will even mention specific people by name with a specific complaints about that official.

Village mothers tell me of specific charities they have had problems with. I'm not sure if I should release this footage on YouTube because of the names mentioned and the repercussions it would cause.

This has happened so often that I’ve come up with three recurring observations:

• A Distrust of NGOs: Bangladeshis have a saying “NGOs taka kai fellay” which translates to “Charities eat the cash”. There is a sense that donations given to a charity don’t properly reach those in need.
• A Preference for 1-on-1 Help: Even in villages where micro-finance is available and reputable charities serve, villagers will often turn to loan sharks instead. Why? There is a sense that getting help from a person is more “dignified” than getting help from an institution. (As speculation, it could also be a case of “better the devil you know”.)
• Remittances as Charity: Despite knowing first-hand about poverty in Bangladesh, few if any Bangladesh emigrant families living abroad (including my own extended network of Bangladeshi friends and family) donate to charity. Instead, such families prefer to send money back home to friends and family so they can spend it on any personal charity initiatives they might be doing (like feeding those in their home village). Even emigrant families prefer to bypass NGOs and to help in a 1-on-1 manner.

It seems like some villagers have the idea that charities are evil organizations staffed by criminals who are just out to steal as much of the public’s donations as humanly possible. The bideshi/foreigner in me knows better – and would love nothing better than to change this opinion. But, the deshi/native in me, can’t help but wonder where all those donations go. And, the more I learn each day, the more the deshi in me gets confused.

For example, I only just learned that the World Vision Gift Catalogue doesn’t actually work the way most of my friends think it does. You can click a button that says “donate a backpack of school supplies to a child” or “donate 2 chickens to a family” but (as one World Vision supporter has pointed out) that doesn’t mean that will actually happen. It just means your donation will go into a pool of funds – not that any school supplies or chickens will be given on your behalf (or at all).

During Cyclone Aila, I teamed up with Save the Children. I set up an online system where people could donate to pay for relief kits. Those who chose to donate a relief kit actually had a relief kit distributed in their name. The World Vision Gift Catalogue does not operate in this manner since "items donated" don't correspond to real physical items (they are merely representative concepts). Featured in this photo is the kit Luis Segovia paid for.

It’s things like this – the seeming disconnect between what donors think they are giving and what’s actually happening on the ground – that villagers complain to me about. I don’t claim to have all the answers. But what I can say is that by listening to locals on-the-ground, learning from experience, leveraging social media, and leaning on both my “bideshi” and “deshi” cultural backgrounds, I’ve been able to do work on the ground that specifically addresses the complaints villagers have shared with me.

A “Third Culture” (aka “Uncultured”) Approach

Children and villagers watch videos of uncultured project supporters who made it possible to bring clean water to this village. Dismiss this as unsustainable or a gimmick if you want, but fostering connections like this overcomes local criticisms of how aid is done.

There is so many things I’ve done differently, but for the sake of brevity, I’d like to focus on three things:

• Separate Fund for the Poor: I gained a qualitatively different level of trust with local villagers when they learned that no cut was being taken from the funds that were going to be helping them. That meant that neither the white SUV that we drove up in nor the crisp clean button-up shirts the aid workers wore were coming from the donations that would be used to help them. And even though the villagers knew that the equipment I was using came from donations from friends and family, they were okay with this because I was able to explain that donations were separate from the funds I was going to use to help them. Basically my model is like Charity: Water – carried all the way to the village.
• Trackable Donations & Direct Line with Donors: Partly because no cut was being taken from donations, it was easier for me to tell them about the specific people who were helping to fund things and/or make things possible. All of a sudden this became less about anonymous funding from a charity and more about help from far away friends. This was further cemented by the fact I was able to use my cellphone to show them specific video messages from my friends. I was even able to start a two-way conversation between villagers and donors over Twitter.
• Independent Presence, Independent Oversight: Even though the charity I worked with had a reputation second-to-none in Bangladesh, what created a quantum leap in perception of me and what I was trying to accomplish amongst villagers was the fact that they knew I was not part of the NGO system. They knew that no manager or director would force me to prematurely move onto the next project before this one was completed to their satisfaction. They knew that I’d be signing off on the budgets and the project proposals. My role was community mobilizer, donor representative, complaints department, and independent auditor all in one. And they knew I would not sign off on anything until the village was fully satisfied (not just “within acceptable standard parameters”).

After explaining Twitter was a "group SMS and picture messaging" service, I asked this villager what he wanted me to send to my friends. He asked me to send his picture (with the message, "tell your friends I said thank you".)

Skipping the BS

It may be true that “Big smiles and thank-yous are far more likely to make a donor feel good and give more”, but I had to bend over backwards to earn every smile and every “thank you” that you see. Partly because villagers were so frank and open with me about their frustrations with aid, they were holding me to a higher standard – and they were skipping the BS.

When I had done something wrong, they’d tell me. When they think what I was doing wasn’t going to work, they’d let me know. When they were angry, they held nothing back. The only way to earn their respect was to listen to them and make things right. This didn’t mean being the village Santa Claus: rather it meant being the bridge-maker and educating them on what the donors could fund and what the charity was willing to do.

Villagers gather together to say "Thank You, YouTube" on camera. Before they agreed, I had to make sure each and every family was fully satisfied with the work I had done on the ground with Save the Children. Yes, there were complaints and issues along the way and yes, I addressed each and every one of them before exiting the village. This didn't mean doing everything they said and throwing money at every problem. Rather it meant building a bridge between donors and the charity in a way that had never been done before.

I concede that “rocking up” to a village with a camcorder, iPhone, and notepad can affect the responses villagers give me. But for me, the most insightful things came when the cameras were off and villagers thought I was out of sight and wouldn’t be able to hear and/or understand their Bengali. Behind my back, locals would be talking amongst themselves about how they felt “for the very first time donations have been properly used” (their words, not mine).

I should point out that earning this kind of respect in any village is serious capital, and it’s easy to use it to feed one’s own ego. Wary of this fact, I seldom told villagers my full name. In fact, after villagers were satisfied with my work and I could sign off on the projects, I made sure that no traces of my name (or this project) were left on any of the projects I completed. Instead, I made sure that donors, the charity, and (most importantly) the villagers themselves got the credit.

This signboard (for the Pond Sand Filter) contains three elements. It acknowledges donors with photos of the supporters who helped make this possible. It acknowledges the charity that implemented the project (Save the Children). And it acknowledges the primary village family who will become caretakers of the Pond Sand Filter as per its handover to the community. Absent: any reference to me or the Uncultured Project.

Exiting a village in a way that lets my role be forgotten is something I do on purpose. This is because it let’s me take the good will and personal reputation I’ve fostered within a village and give it over to the reputation and goodwill of the charity I worked with. Even if a charity doesn’t do a similar project in this particular village again, it has earned respect amongst the people for being a charity that’s agreed to a high such a level of scrutiny, transparency, accountability, and control.

Left in Limbo & Purgatory with Charities

After reading the blog post that inspired this one, I was left blushing at all the good things he had to say about me. He points out that I’ve been thoughtful and haven’t done this project “half-cocked”. Nor have I been, in his words, “jetting off for a few weeks to some developed country, seeing all the flaws in the aid industry, and sharing their epiphany on how they can do such a better job than the aid professionals currently working in the field”. I’ve put the time & effort to do this correctly and respectfully.

And that’s my point. Big international charities wisely dissociate and disconnect themselves from cocky, thrill-seeking, and self-serving voluntourists. But charities are equally reluctant and reticent to engage responsible outsiders with different ideas. Simply put: charities offer no reward for good behavior. Even when I have allies “within the fortress” like Wendy Harman (at the Red Cross), the light at the end of the tunnel (to actually doing more work on the ground with this approach) can be far, far away. And, not every charity has a Wendy Harman.

Beth Kanter, Me, and Red Cross's Wendy Harman.

Immediately after I posted my video “World Vision Vloggers”, one of the officials at World Vision (not my primary contact but one of the people who was regularly corresponding with me about teaming up) promptly blocked me on Twitter and cut off all correspondence with me. This highlights another problem with trying to reach out to charities: our loyalties come into question when we say anything that doesn’t tow the party line. Charities need to be able to distinguish between suggestions from supporters and criticism from cynics.

Above: The video which prompted one World Vision official to block me on Twitter.

People like me exist whether we’re ignored or not. With cheap airfare and “hug-an-orphan” charities catering to “voluntourists”, there is a path for those who want to fly in, fly out, and feel good about themselves. With World Vision Vloggers, there’s even a path now for online celebrities to go into the field and use their momentum to draw attention and raise funds for charities. But there isn’t yet a path for people like me who see the value of established charities and who want to push for innovation.

Worst of all, everyday a charity continues to lock me out (or opts to hit the block button instead of the reply button), is also another day villagers turn to loan sharks, remittances controlled by a few key villagers, and even voluntourists. But village attitudes towards aid, development, and charity can change. All it takes is for them to see what big charities can do when they team up with a bideshi-deshi like me.

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I conclude the video by pointing out that it’s not my intention at all to be a hater. I think that needs emphasizing because it’s far too easy for a charity to mistake well-meaning advice from a supporter to be cynicism & criticism from a skeptic.

It also must be said that when giving advice to a charity like World Vision, you gotta do it with a bit of humility. World Vision has been saving lives and helping people since before I even existed. But that’s part of the point.

My parents were born and brought up in a country where World Vision doesn’t come to raise donations – but rather to comes spend them. World Vision has had a presence in my mother’s rural Bangladesh village – a village where some people are too poor to even be buried – since the 1970s.

I mention this because, as someone whose extended family (but not my most immediate aunts & uncles) still live in that village and many of whom are beneficiaries of World Vision to this very day, extreme poverty is far more complex than can be expressed in any YouTube video.

If our goal is just to sponsor more children – than World Vision Vloggers is a perfect success. But, if our goal is to end extreme poverty within our lifetime, than I hope that initiatives like World Vision Vloggers are just the first step.

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I’ve also said the same thing in more detail (and with examples) in this video:

During my time away from Bangladesh, I’ve been talking to a lot of charities. I’ve consulted with UNICEF, presented at Save the Children HQ, entered talks with the Red Cross, and have been giving input to World Vision.

World Vision is the first charity that’s heard me out and created a plan of action to engage the YouTube community. I was glad to have some input on this. And World Vision has done it in a way that experts like Beth Kanter would be proud: they are letting outsiders come in and aren’t worrying about perfection on the first try.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’ve been advising charities to stop relying solely on Hollywood celebrities. Sending regular folks like Alex, Shawna, and Tom to Zambia have already generated over 300,000 views for World Vision on YouTube. See charities? I told you so.

The big challenge is the next step. My hope is that World Vision will use this success to do more ambitious things with the YouTube community. My fear is that, impressed by the amount of views they are getting, they won’t be challenged to try and engage this community in a deeper way.

If the support I’ve been getting is any indication, the YouTube community wants input on the charity work being on the ground. We want to see where the money goes, we want to see a project executed from start to finish, and we want to get to know the specific people our money has helped.

The technology to do this is here and it’s something I’ve been doing for a while now. But, after spending over 2 years to repair a school, what incentive does a charity have to do something like this again when I can only generate less than 40,000 views? Alex packing for his trip already got World Vision over 200,000 views.

This is an important moment for the YouTube community. We need to praise World Vision for engaging the YouTube community – but we also need to let them know we want more than just them replicating their celebrity-style visits with high profile YouTubers.

One way you can do this is let World Vision know. They are listening. On the World Vision Vloggers website, they have a place where you can leave a note (see the photo below for where the link is). Feel free to drop them a line. You can also tweet something using the #wvv hashtag and they will see it.

World Vision wants your feedback either through leaving a note (see link that I highlighted in the photo) or by tweeting #wvv as a hashtag.

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I know that I started this project with the idea that I want to make a difference on the issue of global poverty – but something keeps pulling my heart specifically to Bangladesh.

It’s hard to explain but, when I’m in Bangladesh, I feel that I’m more than the donations that I’m able to bring to a village. Or that I’m more than the technology and gear that I use to connect with you guys.

When I’m in Bangladesh, I’m able to connect with the people in these villages in a way that’s hard to describe. In a way, I’m not helping some foreign or alien group of people. I feel… like… I’m helping my own people.

As Bangladeshis point out, my spoken Bengali is rubbish. But, the same is not true for my ears. There have been many times when I’m talking to someone and I’m able to pickup a subtle tremble in their voice and read between the lines.

It was a subtle tremble in a young mother’s voice that led me to discover that she was hiding the fact she was living essentially as an indentured servant – working as a housemaid without getting paid.

A young mother working as an unpaid servant (working only for scraps of food) smiles while talking to me.

It was a subtle tremble in Shaeda’s voice which led me to discover that sometimes helping someone can cause jealously within a village – putting pressure on her to share the aid she received.

It was also a subtle tremble I heard from a young boy waiting in line for emergency relief (after losing his home to a cyclone) that I felt it was the right time to say a joke only Bengalis would get. Never in my life did I expect an entire village – having lost their homes and waiting in line for aid – to burst into laughter.

I'd tell you the joke I said that caused the crowd to burst into laughter… but you'd misinterpret it. It's was a joke for Bengalis-only.

Since it is so hard to find charities to team up with, I feel like I shouldn’t be picky. But, my fear is that, if I’m in some foreign country where I don’t understand the culture, I don’t speak the language, and I’m seen as a foreigner whenever I step into a village – I won’t be able to connect with those I help.

Because I won’t be able to pickup the subtle trembles.

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In fact, features and traffic surges included, since starting this project I’ve earned well under $2 a day. To put it simply: Technically, I am just as poor (if not poorer) than the people I help.

OMG I'm rich!.... okay maybe not.

With that in mind, I thought now would be a good time to talk about what role I feel ads through my YouTube partnership play in this project and how I hope it will fit into the big picture.

More after the jump…

In it’s present form, this project is unsustainable. Part of the reason for that is because of the standard I’ve set for how I accept donations to help those in need.

The Project Fund is a fund where no cut is taken for overhead. None. I even have a friend who donates to cover your PayPal fees for sending the money so 100% of what I receive is what I give away.

This, of course, does not cover the cost of equipment to film and photograph all that I do. It doesn’t even cover the travel costs of reaching these remote villages when in-country.

Save the Children staff purchase construction materials for the pond sand filter you funded. Not a single penny from your donations were taken for overhead - not even for the cost of reaching this remote village.

That’s where the Operating & Equipment Fund comes in. This is the fund which has helped pay for my new camera and microphone. There’s also enough money to cover some (but not all) of my in-country travel expenses while in the field.

Staff from Charity: Water film in the Central African Republic for an upcoming campaign to raise funds. Their travel and expensive film gear was covered by private benefactors and NOT through public donations for clean water. The Uncultured Project presently works on a similar principle.

But, when I need a haircut, who pays for it? When my toothbrush needs replacing, who covers that? And when I need down time so I don’t go insane and burn out, where does the money come from?

Right now, that money comes from my parents.

The fact of the matter is, if I am to be able to do this project with any semblance of dignity, I need to be able to do this project in a way that doesn’t require my parents to give their adult son an allowance.

I believe that being a YouTube partner is not only the solution to this problem – but the most ethical path to sustainability.

YouTube partners (like iJustine seen above) earn revenue from their videos because they are allowed to display advertisements at the bottom and to the right of their videos.

As much as I’ve been giving charities flak for making it hard to team up with me, I must confess that almost all of the charities I’ve talked to have offered to hire me.

Some of the offers included ways which would allow me to continue to produce videos on the Uncultured Project YouTube channel, tweet from my Twitter account, and continue to write on this blog.

But because I want to be an independent voice, and because I want you to be sure that the charities I endorse are ones I truly believe in, I have rejected all the offers to blog and vlog for pay.

I also believe this speaks to how I’d like to sustain this project.

I would like to be less like a charity – where the CEO gets a salary based on a cut from public donations, and more like CNN – which pays it’s reporters based on private revenue through advertising.

Anderson Cooper (CNN) was able to fly to Haiti to both report (and even assist) thanks to advertising revenue earned by CNN and it's parent company.

This also helps structure my work in a way that helps me make the distinction of how I’m different from a charity. I feel this project is more about citizen journalism combined with a citizen philanthropy component.

I also think this is more fair. A charity CEO’s salary is fixed regardless of how many donations come in per year. The income I generate is entirely dependent on how well received my work is.

And, while I do often reinvest ad revenue back into the project (by contributing to the funds used to help those in need and/or to buy equipment), I have always treated ad revenue as part of my personal income.

It’s also important to keep things in perspective.

Even Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity: Water (a charity that takes no cut from your donations) still is able to earn (through private funding) a six-figure income greater than the income of most Top 100 YouTubers.

Anderson Cooper, who often travels to developing countries to highlight natural disasters and poverty, is able to earn a multi-million dollar salary greater than the income of the Top 100 YouTubers combined.

My hope is that, if my income ever improves through ads and my YouTube partnership, you guys will give me the same level of understanding as you have other with YouTubers earning money through YouTube.

After all, if getting rich was my goal, there are better opportunities outside of this project.

[Update: In case you were wondering, through donations, the CEO of the American Red Cross earns over $440,000 per year, Save the Children USA earns over $350,000 pear year, World Vision USA earns over $370,000 per year. I think these CEOs do a hell of a lot of work - and put up with a lot of life & death pressures - for what they get paid. So, this isn't a critique against their salaries. I'm just posting this for some additional perspective.]

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Jason Sadler

Inspired by some recent comments on this blog and tweets, I’d like to talk about the direction I feel this project needs to be going. And it starts with the story of Jason Sadler.

Jason Sadler is an entrepreneur who has successfully used social media to generate fame, attention, and wealth for himself through his business called I Wear Your Shirt. Hoping to use his momentum on social media, Jason decided to form his own non-profit organization.

Jason’s non-profit was about providing free clothes to people in Africa. He called his organization “1 Million Shirts” with the goal of getting people to donate 1 million used shirts which he would then ship to needy families in Africa.

A lot of us donate our gently-used clothing to local good-will. And, when I’m overseas, I often find myself parting with some of my favorite shirts because I find people who could benefit from them more than I could. But, on the scale Jason was aiming to do, this could do more harm than good.

Click the jump to read more…

Many individuals in poor communities are pulling themselves out of poverty by building a career by either selling shirts or making shirts in their villages. While it’s one thing to give away a backpack full of clothes, it’s completely different to kill a fledgling industry pulling people out of poverty.

I mention this story because, on paper, Jason was doing everything right. He had good intentions, he filed to incorporate as a registered non-profit, he had charities on-the-ground willing to implement his vision, and he had the large support of a passionate, young, online following.

What Jason lacked was a proper and deep understanding of the realities on-the-ground. He also sought charities which offered him the least resistance. I mention this because, to many of you, my current theme of trying to team up with charities who I often describe as “fortresses” (a term coined by charity expert Beth Kanter) seems to be taken by many as a distraction.

But it’s not.

In 2007, I was on-the-ground in one of Bangladesh’s worst natural disasters: Cyclone Sidr. I saw countless well-meaning charities and individuals rush in with aid only to have their aid flung on the sides of roads or (in the case of clothes) used as make-shift firewood so families could stay warm.

Even though I just came with a handful of blankets, I believe I was able to be more effective than some of the worst offenders because I had the opportunity to team up with a reputable charity (like Save the Children) which had the know-how on how to give aid and give aid effectively:

In 2009, with your support, I completed a clean water project in a remote village that had seen some of the worst horrors of Cyclone Sidr. The water produced by this project was tested clean and safe enough for anyone reading this to drink.

At the same time, I’ve seen aid organizations and charities “purify” water that was later proven to be unsafe for human consumption. I avoided this by doing my research on the ground and reaching out to charities that I felt were the real deal. And, combined with the fact I was on the ground as an independent party with a unique approach, we were able to do something special:

Similarly, I’ve had friends who have gone to Africa who have seen schools built with much fanfare – only to have those very schools become vacant buildings. The reason is because many charities that are in the business of aid are not always in the business of sustainable development.

I was mindful of this as I was helping to rebuild a school in rural Bangladesh. I had no clue about how to safely rebuild a school, which contractors were the best, and how to do so in a way that ensures the building stays intact and a place for students long after I was gone.

But, the charity that I decided to team up with did. And, not only that, they were familiar enough with the community that they were able to keep an eye out for suspicious activity. In one case, Save the Children protected me by stepping in when a mullah tried to pitch for funds for his madrassa (read the risk of supporting madrassas here).

The sad fact is I can never make enough vlogs, blog posts, or tweets to fully immerse you guys into the reality on the ground. All I can do is open but a tiny window. And, it is reality on-the-ground, which is why I am taking the steps that – to many of you – may seem like distractions.

I need charities to support this work. But I don’t just need any charity. I need to team up with charities which I feel are the real deal and are able to navigate the tricky and risky realities on the ground. And what I have learned is what is easy and what can generate the most popular support isn’t always right.

And, while I’m bound to make mistakes, I need to do my due diligence. Because, if I don’t, the risks will be far worse than 1 Million Shirts accidentally killing local economies. If I rush things, I could be providing unsafe water, building unsustainable schools, and possibly even becoming an accessory to terrorism.

At the same time, I believe that by doing things as just an individual solves deficits that big multinational charities have in regards to how we connect and help people. But this isn’t a criticism against them. Rather, this is my pitch to them that we can be more effective by pooling our efforts together.

But this takes time.

This is why more than your donations, more than you showing your support on YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, I need your patience, understanding, and support as I try and navigate these complex hurdles. I know this is a tough ask and maybe not everyone supporting this project today is interested in hanging around for the ride.

But, as one well respected blog read amongst charities and aid workers says, “Doing aid poorly is fun and easy. Doing aid well requires a lot of knowledge, time, and effort”. I’m not Jason Sadler – my project isn’t a hobby to some successful business. This is my life’s work… and how I work affects other lives. I need to put in the time & effort to make this work.

That means negotiating and talking with charities. It also means some of which I encounter will be fortresses, some of which I encounter will feel my approach count for strikes against me, and some which see the value of what I do and need to explore ways to make it work.

But this takes time. Please bear with me.

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Basically, I have three strikes against me:

1. I’m asking to give restricted donations: that is donations which I can track so that I can show you guys what exactly you funded.
2. I’m asking for no cut be taken for overhead: that is I’m insisting that the donations I give them not be used for their marketing campaigns, administrative overhead, etc.,.
3. I’m not fully data sharing: that is I’m keeping your personal data that PayPal provides (like your address) private from them so they can’t use this data to solicit you over phone, email, and/or snail mail for more donations.

So, let me throw this out there to whoever is reading this: am I doing it wrong?

Are these three issues something I should change my stance on in order to make myself more appealing to charities? Or is the fact that I stick to these things the very reason you guys support my approach?

Also, as full disclosure, I do share full donation info with friends who help and support my work (like John Green) – but I’ve never sold this info and/or given it over to charities to use for their marketing and soliciting campaigns. Is this wrong?

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You could basically write a list as long as my arm as to how Dan and I are very different people, with different backgrounds, different cultural upbringings, and different global experiences.

Yet, despite all our differences, we seem to have wound up on a very similar path. YouTube is a big part of our lives, we both have extremely ambitious projects, and we both walked away from institutional education to pursue our respective visions.

It’s for this reason, I couldn’t help but see myself in Dan’s latest video.

I’ve been there. One some days – I’m still there. It’s not the ambitious scale and scope of a project that gets you down, it’s small technical hurdles which derail things. It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts.

I’ve done the sleeping during the day – where you’re too stressed to sleep but sleep enough to screw up your sleeping schedule. I’ve had the “OMG what was I thinking when I started this project?!?” moments all too often.

So Dan, if you’re reading this, I have just one thing to say: hang in there. This maybe the first bad day you’ve had in your project – but it won’t be the last. But you know what? It can be worth it.

You may find yourself one day doing something that you never imagined you’d do or finding yourself touching and inspiring people in ways you could never imagine.

And when that day happens, you’ll know in your heart that it was worth every frustrating moment, every bad day, every sleep-but-too-stressed-to-sleep night you’ve had.

You also have a lot of things to your advantage that I wish I had (your massive online audience aside). You have tons of confidence. The first thing I think of when I turn on the camera is “OMG I’m too fat, ugly, and stumble on words too much to be on camera”.

In fact, in much the same way that your videos are condensed moments when your the most cheerful, my videos are the condensed moments when I’m the most confident and am able to silence my inner-critic long enough to be on camera to say a few lines.

That’s actually why I’m blogging this. I would never have the confidence or courage to film myself during a bad day. On really bad days I just go silent: no vlogs, no tweets, nothing.

So thanks for sharing this and hang in there. And, for anyone else reading this, I wonder how many other people can relate to this in whatever projects you guys are undertaking…

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What you would get is this video:

First, it must be said that this is far less sketchy than it seems. Rohan was a friend of mine long before I sent him a dime. I trusted him enough as a friend before I entrusted him with part of this project. That, of course, does limit how often I can do things like this.

Second, there is a specific reason I wanted to try something like this. Quite frankly, there is a vacuum out there when it comes to supporting people like me right now.

There are so many foundations touting themselves as supporting “social innovators”, “social entrepreneurs”, and “social change”. But, you know what? It’s nonsense.

From experience, almost all of these foundations tend to overlook people like me. Maybe because we get mistaken as a mere “film project”, or because we can’t speak their jargon, or because we operate outside of the structure they’ve built for themselves.

Which leaves people like me – whether it’s someone like Rohan doing a short trip or someone like Mark whose devoted his life to this kind of work – to go it alone. If we don’t help each other, who will?

And, by teaming up with a friend, I now have a fellow YouTuber who understands the frustrations of trying to do work like this. And how, it’s impossible to produce videos on a regular basis like most major YouTubers:

At the risk of sounding grandiose, the fact is I have a vision of how donors, supporters, and people on-the-ground should be engaging and interacting with each other. It’s a vision I’ve been putting into practice for over three years – and I have so much more I want to do.

Yet, despite you guys liking it and people on-the-ground loving it, foundations will overlook it and charities (that are fortresses) will resist it. C’est la vie. My only regret is I wish Rohan & I had the chance to do more than just help 40 families with blankets.

The future of this project really does rest with the support it gets from the YouTube community. And whether it’s people like Rohan on the ground or you guys supporting this every step of the way online – I couldn’t ask for a better support network.

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