A dynamic community of global leaders coming together to discuss a big idea: the power of innovative thinking and technology to solve our greatest challenges.
BY MAGAZINE COLUMNIST JOSH POLLOCK
and MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL
Website SGS at Mashable.com
Website Ericsson Networked Society
Website UN Foundation
Related Article LiveBlogging Social Good Summit Day Two
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Related Article LiveBlogging Social Good Summit Day Four
Related Article Social Media: What’s Yoga Got To Do With It?
Related Article Social Media Is The New Authentic
Reader Comments
your short video, by social media revolution, has some astounding data
i guess when someone nearly 61 years old gets involved using this “new” stuff, even if gradually so, it must mean the horse is out the barn, down the road, and munching on the neighbor’s garden 
what does yoga got to do with all this?
well, what does yoga have to do with anything people connect themselves and each other to? everything…
thanks so much for being around susan
sincerely,
adan
–
Adan Lerma
http://yoga-adan.com/
https://www.facebook.com/yoga.adan
http://twitter.com/yoga_adan
@yoga_adan
Afternoon
5:00 pm Susan
The most repeated quote of the afternoon on Twitter comes from Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation for Hilary Clinton.
The 21st century is a lousy time to be a control freak.
Describing global internet access he adds, “You can’t throw a billion people in jail.”
4:45 pm Josh
Kathy Calvin is moderating a discussion on maternal health, she told the audience that,
Facts tell, Stories sell.
There is nothing new about that, but Heather Armstrong, has used her mommy blog Dooce.com to raise money to train midwives in Bangladesh. She went there with Christy Turlington, who is on stage with her now, to learn about preventable deaths during childbirth. As a storyteller, she did what she does best with this experience, she told the stories to her followers and they have come together to make a difference on this important issue. Today has been full of big projects. Great to hear a small sounding personal story that can still have such a huge impact.
4:15 pm Susan
Lot’s of flash photo activity – Christy Turlington arrives.
She survived a complication in delivery with a simple intervention while giving birth to her child, and discovered that it was the most common complication to arise in labor, and a leading cause of maternal death worldwide.
She founded Every Mother Counts to address global issues in maternal health. There are educational modules on her website.
There’s also her film, No Woman, No Cry
3:30 pm Susan
“Not idealist, not naive.” Simon Mainwaring revs up a fresh perspective by challenging us to integrate the concepts of giving and green with the most basic way we make things and shop for them, harnessing “the enormous resources of the private sector to massively scale social change.”
There’s an intriguing manifesto on the We First website
Ten Core Beliefs of Contributory Consumption
– An inter-dependent, global community requires an expanded definition of self-interest.
– The future of profit is purpose.
– Technology is teaching us to be human again.
– Consumers want a better world, not just better widgets.
– Brands must become architects of community.
– Brands must become day traders in social emotion.
– The evolution of revolution is contribution.
– We cannot separate living and giving if we hope to build a better world.
– Life’s necessities must generate the necessities for life.
– Prosperity is not the wealth of a few but the well-being of many.
Check it out!
2:45 pm Josh
Howard W. Buffett, Executive Director, Howard G. Buffett Foundation, began his speech today by talking about the power of acting out of empathy for others. He asserted that the triggers of human goodness are internal and that we are hard wired to help others. Philanthropy to often in Buffett’s view has become what he calls “Philanthropic Colonialism” and that we can do better.
In his speech he announced The Learning By Giving Foundation. This innovative new program will empower students to practice philanthropy in their own communities. Instead of giving money directly to charities, they are teaching students about philanthropy and giving them money to give as they choose.
Learning by Giving is an example of how a small change in the traditional paradigm can transform an entire sector: By simply empowering students to become problem solvers in their own communities, we maximize the impact of our efforts, encourage innovation, and inspire life-long engagements with philanthropy. – Howard W. Buffett
2:30 pm Josh
What really struck me about Charity Water’s founder Scott Harrison’s presentation is that their fundraising sounds fun. Their page MyCharityWater.org is a social network of sorts where people can create their own fundraising event, invite their friends and family to contribute and then track what their money has done. Working together with loved ones, this site can turn a birthday or a bike race or whatever into a way to make a huge difference in other people’s lives. That and the fact that they have provided clean drinking water to over 2 million people.
When Ted Turner was on stage earlier I didn’t expect he’d be so funny. He says the only way to get through difficult times and problems like climate change, is to maintain your sense of humor. Later on, Amir Dar of Idealist.org told the crowd that our problems are connected but we are not and that good ideas don’t spread quickly enough. Idealist’s new site IdealistNYC.org is designed to tackle these problems and bring people together to make a better world.
Nicholas Negroponte of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation gave a great presentation about what a hundred dollar laptop can do. The photos he had in his presentation were amazing. Images of kids smiling. Imagine that, not just reaching kids but making learning fun, where before they might not have had access to education at all. You can view more of their photos by checking out their Flicker page.
This week will be full of great new tools like IdealistNYC and My Charity Water, to bring people together. When they succeed I hope we remember what Ted Turner said about not loosing our sense of humor and we have a good time and a good laugh while we do it. Laughter is infectious, if we want people to keep coming back and want to get involved let’s make it look fun and people outside looking in will want to get involved and stay involved.
2:00 pm Susan
Scott Harrison tells a terrific story of savvy hooked up fundraising for his organization charity: water.
He held an open bar fundraiser charging $20 at the door. He got everyone’s email address. The event raised only $15,000, but he spent all of it in the field, drilling wells and repairing wells. He equipped all of his projects with gps enabled cameras and had every one of his donors emailed with photos from the site they had funded.
Scott says, “It shows the power in closing the loop over a small donation.”
Five years on we’ve raised 43M bucks, and 2M people in 19 countries got clean water who didn’t have it.
But we’ve only solved 1/500th of our problem.
Our new goal? 2B for clean water. Impossible!
We’re doing it. We achieving 65% year over year growth. We grew 85% last year, up over 65% this year, even in these times.
1:45 pm Susan
Dynamic Monique Coleman talks with UN Under Secretary of the UN, Valerie Amos about the power of young people to make a difference, and the need to fill the innate desire young people have to make a meaningful contribution.
I’ve been asked, Coleman says, “Why is it in developing countries we’re fighting to stay alive, while in countries like yours, young people are killing themselves? Something is missing.”
1:30 pm Susan
Ted Turner onstage with Mashable’s Adam Ostrow.
In answer to Adam, Ted said
If you want to get rich, be smart. Make smart investments like I did, and don’t make bad ones like I did too.
Truth will set you free. When you tell the truth as best you can, you’re making a contribution. When you’re wiretapping illegally, you’re doing wrong.
What’s the future of print media?
It’s gone. We’ve done really well with it.
US media concentrates too much on the US and not on what’s going on in the world. We’re an interconnected world.
Turner went on:
Nuclear weapons? The only way I can make it through is to keep my sense of humor. If you read my ex-wife’s book you’ll see she gives me credit for giving her her sense of humor bcd.
I studied history. It seemed to me the people who did the best in life were the ones who made the most friends. The people who made the most enemies didn’t do so well.
That’s what happens when you bomb people. You don’t make people like you when you bomb people.
I hate to see my country bombing my customers. Customers are important and you should treat them with repeat and dignity. I made a lot of money and had a lot of fun, I think we should try that for awhile.
These wars have bankrupted us. A million dollars a year for one soldier for one year in Afghanistan. It made sense in the middle ages when there was nothing else to do. There was no NFL. But we’ve got viagra now. You don’t have to start a war to have a good time.
Being poor and then rich, being poor again is not a very pleasant prospect. Take my advise, rich is better.
How to succeed?
Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.
If you start a business you’re already making a contribution by hiring people.
If you were to start a business today, what would you begin?
Alternate clean energy is the biggest single opportunity for the future. It’s so large. It’s got to be done everywhere. 25% of homes in the world still don’t have access to electricity. Everybody should have energy. Everyone should have electricity. There’s no worse poverty than not having access to energy.
How to be a good leader?
It’s very complex. It takes a lot of different things to make a good leader. We sweated the payroll every week for twenty years.
I got a lot of flags in the flag bag on my boat, but there’s no white flag. We’re not going to surrender. The guys that are wrong will give up before the guys that are right.
Morning
12:15 PM Josh
I’m trying out a social Facebook game, Trash Tycoon that teaches about upcycling. Computer games are a great way to teach through active learning. It looks like a fun way for kids to learn about how garbage can go from a problem to a solution using simple bio technologies. So far in the game I’ve gathered garbage and used worm bins to turn it into fertilizer.
11:45 AM Josh
We are sharing a table with some interesting folks from the State Department’s International Information Programs. They are using social networks to engage people in a conversation about various issues including a cool Facebook page designed to foster a discussion of issues surrounding climate change.
11:30 AM Susan
Just met Lisa Russell an independent film maker who was a panel speaker at last year’s Social Good Summit. She’s going to do a 3×5 with us later this week!
11:15 AM Josh
The Startups For Good challenge is highlighting eight new start ups designed to improve the world. Several of them have promising new strategies to use online tools to make it easier for people to help others and live more sustainably. I will be highlighting several of them before the winner of the challenge is announced on Thursday afternoon.
Catchafire has created a way to link skilled professionals directly to nonprofit organizations in need of their skills. Their service allows people who want to volunteer their time and do what they are best at, for the good of a deserving organization. Catchafire is making it easier for people to help others.
There are so many people who want to be helpful and don’t know how. Services like Catchafire can make the most of the best resource those of us looking to transform the world have: each other.
Environmentalism is so often presented as something that will stave off a nightmare scenario for our children or grandchildren. All this fear isn’t healthy and there must be a better way to motivate people to adopt sustainable practices.
Another of the finalists a new nonprofit organization called em[POWER] is helping people in Bangladesh and Pakistan use composting and renewable energy to make a living. Their goal is to empower people to improve their own lives while generating natural fertilizer, bio fuels and clean electricity. em[POWER] saw the people who eek out a difficult living scavenging garbage in the dumps of megacities and saw an opportunity to educate people about how they can make a better living, be healthier and help the environment.
This week I will be looking at new technologies that make it make it easier for people to adopt new sustainable practices and live a healthier and happier life by lowering their environmental impact. Living a ecoconsiousness life is a better life. Doesn’t that sound like a better pitch for sustainability than fear of a global warming nightmare?
10:30 AM Susan
Ericsson’s Networked Society Producer Einar Bodstrom (Great Warrior in Icelandish, BTW – yoga roots!) interviewed The Magazine of Yoga about yoga in the contemporary world and how yogis might use social media to serve our communities and expand our support networks!
10:15 AM Susan
Dwight Witherspoon – a distant cousin of that Witherspoon – is heading up today’s Ericsson team. He tells me his wife, who lives in their home in Sweden, is a big fan of yoga. We’re hoping to field a guest post from her to expand our international view of practice.
10:00 AM Susan
Josh and I are meeting great people who are interested in public service and new media. We started off our morning with the super supportive people from Ericsson one of the Social Good Summit sponsors.
Coverage begins later today! Watch this page for updates after 11 a.m. EST, when Josh and Susan begin The Magazine of Yoga coverage of United Nations week from the Digital Media Lounge of the Social Good Summit.
Send your thoughts, comments, ideas to letters@themagazineofyoga.com and we’ll post them on this live blog page today.
What is SGS all about?
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© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.
