Today’s crop of young people — kids comfortable with digital media who grew up with the Internet — are called the “YouTube Generation.” Now, little by little, adults are figuring out how to think like this tech-savvy, visually oriented cohort. I wrote today, for example, about a program designed to capitalize on young adults’ interest in filmmaking to get some great publicity for a free charitable event.
And here is another video-oriented endeavor, a nonprofit started by a mother who got the idea — no kidding — from watching her sons film videos for YouTube.
Last month, Laika Grant Mann founded World Flix, which the organization’s Web site describes as “a non-profit organization determined to change the world one video clip at a time.”
The idea is to give everyone the chance to be a philanthropist by directly connecting donors and needy projects. While that is not a new idea, what’s different about this organization is its use of film to explain why a potential donor should direct his or her dollars to a certain project.
Any endeavor that addresses basic needs such as food, water, shelter, sanitation or healthcare can submit a project proposal via the World Flix Web site, where the staff will consider whether it meets the organization’s criteria and whether it “can be filmed and sustained with a microgrant of $5,000 or less.”
As World Flix is so new, there are only three videos posted so far, but that’s enough for would-be philanthropists to get a start. Site visitors can browse the videos, see each project’s fundraising goal and progress, and make a donation to whichever project they deem most worthy.
An example of the site’s content is the following video about The Tibet Vision Project, which aims “to eliminate preventable blindness throughout Tibet, with local resources only, by the year 2020.” The organization hopes to connect with enough donors through World Flix to raise the money for a slit-lamp microscope for eye diagnosis in new eye care centers in Tibet. As of this writing, the project has raised $205 toward its $4,000 goal.
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng