By Briana | June 5th 2013

Little Changemakers

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Last year I attended The World Domination Summit in Portland. It was amazing, and I can’t wait to make it back this year (where my spa will host a space for attendees to chillax and get massages). One of the most inspiring that happened at this event was, Chris Guillebeau gave everyone in the audience $100 to invest in a meaningful project or person.

Yes, all 1,000 attendees walked away with a little envelope with a 100 dollar bill in it.

I was in the midst of packing up our life to move to Boulder, so I tucked that envelope in a safe place until I could give it the attention that it deserved. And like all safe places that you tuck things when you’re moving – it wasn’t uncovered again for several months.

When I found that little envelope and thought about the intention behind it, it became super clear to me what I wanted to do with it – I wanted to help influence a generation to think philanthropic and be philanthropic.

fosterlight

This is a story about how 20 three to six year olds turned $100 into $450 and got a whole community involved.

My daughter goes to a sweet little school, and her teacher is amazeballs. I went to her and asked what she thought about getting the kids involved in raising money for a charity. She was all for it.

We sat in a circle and discussed some causes:

causes

Then they voted:

voted

Shockingly they voted for the Humane Society!

Then we talked about the idea behind what Chris Guillebeau started by believing in people to make positive change in the world. They had insightful, funny, and ridiculous questions. It was awesome.

We started their donation jar with the $100.

donationjar

donationjarIIAnd then they came up with more ways to help:

  • Donating their allowance
  • Baking dog biscuits
  • Having a bake sale to raise money.

And they did. This jar is full of money that these kids decided to donate, not their parents.

They baked biscuits. Unfortunately the Humane Society can’t actually take homemade biscuits – but they barely noticed that slight flaw in the plan.

And their class organized a bike to school day and bake sale to raise money.

And they invited someone from the Humane Society to come and talk with the class about the difference they are making and about the animals there. The kids were enthralled.

HumaneSocietyVisit
So all in all, they more than quadrupled the original donation, helped out a good cause, got involved, and encouraged a whole community to participate. I’d say that was a wise investment of $100 Chris Guillebeau, nicely done.

If you have kids in your life that you want to spark a philanthropic thread in – do it. It’s never too early. My daughter has four jars that she can choose to put her allowance in: savings, spending, investing, and donating. The more she understands how her money helps others, the more she wants to put money in donating every week.

Children have huge hearts and brilliant minds. We are here to foster their light – Tweet it 

Can you take $5 today and do something with it that makes the world a better place? Scroll down to the comments and tell me about it.

 

2 Comments

  • Matthew Kuehlhorn says:

    What a beautiful question and wonderful story. Thank you.

    $5 into something to make the world a better place…I will take that on and report back in a few as I have to think about that and open space for the opportunity to arrive.

    Thank you.

  • Phil says:

    I’ve got $50 constantly recirculating through Kiva.org . I Think I’ve lent that same money out at least 6 times already to help some very industrious people combat poverty.

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