One of our summer interns, Katie, joined the GG team a couple weeks ago and has hit the ground running, coordinating our guerrilla marketing campaign last week and becoming a blogger extraordinaire. After her amazing blog entries about her experiences in Myanmar after the Cyclone, I asked her to help the GG team blog on WG. Inspired by some of the eBay auctions listed in the name of GG projects, Katie waxed...um...philosophical...
Specific trends define a generation. I’ll be twenty-one next week (woohoo!) which means I was born in 1987. Whenever I’m with peers and someone mentions things like pogs, “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego” or those cuddly little Pound Puppies, eyes light up and reminiscent conversation starts to flow. It’s crazy how TV shows, music and movies affect the culture of a generation.
But besides media, another trend my generation gets to be a part of is the giving trend. It’s exciting to see the number of donations up on the monitor in the GlobalGiving office. Or when the cyclone hit my home country of Myanmar, I was fielding phone calls left and right from people who wanted to help. There’s a lot more generosity out there than people often think. This is why it made me especially happy to see The Simpsons Movie being sold on ebay, with a percentage of the profit going to help the Myanmar cyclone relief! Friends, the trends are comin’ together in a real good way.
My brother and I grew up watching The Simpsons, the longest running comedy on television. Sure the characters make their share of mistakes: Bart sells his soul to Millhouse for five bucks, Homer gains 60 pounds to qualify as disabled.
But if you stick with them through the episodes, good almost always prevails. We learn that even a guy like Homer Simpson has a generous heart. He offers Apu a place to stay when he loses his job, arranges a second wedding with Marge to make up for their lousy first ceremony (complete with a Doobie Brothers wedding band), and gives up a chance at wealth to allow his daughter Maggie to keep her beloved teddy bear.
If Homer can give, we all can give.
So feel good about giving: sit back and enjoy the movies with America’s favorite family. D'oh!
