Red, Hip, Powerful

In 20 months, the Global Fund has collected USD50 mil. A portion of the profits from the sale of 11.6 mil (PRODUCT) RED goes to the fund.

Product (RED), the brain child of Bono and Bobby Shriver, manifests innovative approach to social cause and the immense viral marketing power of new media when used creatively to further social causes.

The innovation - like their business model, the marketing strategy of PRODUCT (RED) is seamlessly executed. The firms behind the (RED) brand, Wolff Olins and Buzztone, have managed to roll social networking, shopping, philanthropy and celebrities all into a brilliant cross-media campaign. Described by analysts, the key to PRODUCT (RED) is that it’s not just a cause, it’s a brand. Combining style with an altruistic message gives immediate status to a product especially when it’s endorsed by stars.

Using new media, PRODUCT (RED) has done so well virally, does a great job of keeping a consistent brand throughout all media channels and have generated widespread visibility from a massive international cross-marketing push. The viral success is already showing on the (RED) blog and (RED) Myspace page.

Most inspiring is to see traditionally bureaucratic institution, the UN, experimenting with new media and succeeding at exploiting the vast potential.

In promoting Stand Up 2006, the UN successfully used the viral video, YouTube. Celebrities ranging from Dave Matthews to Shakira to LonelyGirl15 are featured in 1 – 2 minute video segments that have been uploaded into Google Video and YouTube. The reaction from YouTubers was tremendous. Here are a few of the thousands of user-created videos that have been uploaded in response to Renetto’s Stand Up video.

In addition to the viral videos, the UN also promoted Stand Up in Second Life. The Millenium Campaign hosted Stand Up events at virtual kiosks and in 2nd Life’s “Midnight Plaza”. For the less avatar-savvy, the Stand Up website has a list of events that simultaneously took place in real life.

The response (RED) has gotten on Myspace is certainly impressive. Their network is currently increasing at a pace of about 16,000 new friends per hour. Teenagers and young adults have submitted comments to show their support, many of them sharing personal stories about their (RED) products or celebrity sightings.

If nothing else, (RED) on Myspace and Stand Up on YouTube show just how receptive Gen-Yers are to cause marketing, and the potential of social media for non-profit organizations and similar impactful coverage for other health, literacy, poverty and environmental issues.

Putrajaya Could Happen A Different Way

If there is any place in Malaysia that can be our eco-city, it would be Putrajaya. Putrajaya is a place where people live near their workplaces while good clean public transport makes every area accessible. Designing and putting up buildings for mixed use, combining work and residential areas will minimise commuting. Putrajaya's network of cycle and footpaths will help the city achieve close to zero vehicle emissions. A buffer zone of managed wetland between the city and the natural wetland helps maintain a balanced ecosystem. All these already make it easier to create a community with low energy consumption that is carbon free. Putrajaya Corporation needs to do more:

• While the city's buses are powered by natural gas, clean technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells must be used power public transport.

• Buildings must be designed to help reduce energy use, making efficient use of energy sources and generating energy from renewable sources. It is easy to have buildings with photovoltaic solar panel cells. Wind turbines, too are practical ways of harnessing energy and the technology to do so is already available and used elsewhere.

• There must be processes to capture and purify rain and all buildings should be fully insulated to minimise the waste of energy.
• Organic waste such as recycled city waste, palm oil biomass, rice husks and vegetable peels must be recycled to generate electricity. Organizations like Boustead Plantation and LaFarge Cement have developed and are using technologies that efficiently recycle waste for energy.
  

Some of these stuffs I learnt from Chilean, Alejandro Gutierrez, an architect and urban designer for engineering and design giant Arup.

Reminders of Sex in Prague

When in Prague, you'll definitely be one of the many hanging out in front of the astronomical clock, Old Town Square, waiting for it to chime. The clock was built in 1410, and refined in 1490. No clock has ever been built that rivals this one.

Every hour, when the circles in the circles line up on the face of the clock, a little skeleton appears, ringing a bell, then a succession of apostles parade by a couple of little open windows. The skeleton keeps ringing his bell and you, among the people below take pictures while considering your mortality. Well, at least I thought I considered mine.

Upon considering your mortality, stop by the nearby 3-storey Sex Machines Museum, on Melantichova 18. Officially described as "an exposition of mechanical erotic appliances, the purpose of which is to bring pleasure and allow extraordinary and unusual positions during intercourse."

You'll wonder the practices of those who invented the objects on the top floor, which include whips and chains and masks and outfits that can get your skin crawling. There are all kinds of seriously perplexing stuffs. The furnitures are definitely incomprehensible. You'll certainly spend some time trying to figure out how they are supposed to be used.

When you've seen it all, you'll likely realize that the "pleasure" element is largely subservient to the "extraordinary and unusual" element and that it takes a lot of guts and reminders for some people to have sexual intercourse. Sex is apparently not a very pleasurable activity for some.

Birth of a Wikipedian in Cyberjaya

Having been named as the 2006 Person of the Year by Time Magazine, I have to live up to it. Living it up required me to begin a Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/), check-in as a Wikipedian, join the millions on myspace.com and take on a persona that exudes a version of myself that I have so desired to impress upon others. And in Second Life, I really wanted to have lots of sex. Second Life is where I can look however I want, do whatever I want, use the fake name I want and I could make all my fantasies come true, including multi-partnered, marathon sex. For a while I found Second Life therapeutic as I could explore my darkest desires, discover a fetish that I don’t have and only to find out later that to have a penis, I had to pay for it. As I could not afford to buy a penis yet, I thought that I could either look for another Lifer who would give it to me for free, or I could work to amass some wealth before I could upgrade my fantasy life.

Yes, gathering wealth in a virtual world! I learnt that Second Life is a thriving business and the brilliant part is that you pay for fake items like cars, real estate, clothing, etc with real money. Some people make thousands of U.S. dollars selling designs for cars or flipping virtual property.

A Chinese woman, Ailin Graef announced that she had amassed virtual real-estate holdings worth over $1 million. Her 3D avatar, Anshe Chung, made the cover of Business Week. Even big-name corporations are using Second Life's virtual world for marketing purposes. Adidas and Reebok are selling virtual shoes while Pontiac and Toyota are selling virtual cars.

In Second Life, the possibilities are almost endless. You can open a retail store or start a house-building business, run a casino or become a landscaper. Just as land is important in the real world, in Second Life, buying land gives you an anchor in this virtual world. Once you purchase land, you can sell it at a profit. You can build a house, furnish it, stock the refrigerator, and invite friends for a cookout. In fact, you can build and sell all sorts of other goods and services.

The endless possibilities could even extend to Rotary. Take the case of the organization Save the Children which uses Second Life to raise real dollars. At the Save the Children "Yak Shack," you're contributing real money toward real yaks for very real children in Tibet each time you purchase a "virtual yak". Laugh if you like. But at the end of the day, those Tibetan children get milk, wool, and much-needed help in plowing fields.

The warm flush of superiority at the thought of possibly putting the Adidas guys out of business, quickly changed to a feeling of complete devastation when I could not open a premium account in Second Life because I had exceeded my Mastercard spending limit. A premium account would have given me access to real estate, greater wealth and perhaps, philanthropy with a few of those virtual yaks for charity.

With no capital to start with in Second Life, I decided to abandon my ultimate fantasy and quest for wealth. Instead, do a little charity – contribute to Wikipedia. So began my life as a Wikipedian.

Why Not?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX8sW8xZ0rk Too many IT professionals dismiss the unproven in the name of defending enterprise integrity. Would an IT manager welcome Facebook in the workplace?

Consider a company that has encouraged employees to spend one hour each Friday on their Facebook profiles, connecting with co-workers, customers, family and friends. And sometime later, the company is actually going much further than that, replacing its corporate intranet with Facebook as a front end linked to a low-cost content management system behind the firewall. Then consider the fact that Facebook provides an engaging experience, it’s free, it’s easy to write custom apps on top of it, and you can set up both private and public groups.

Why not?

Kiva

Kiva has re-invented lending in the 21st century. Anyone with at least USD25 can log on to the site, browse the profiles of entrepreneurs in third-world countries and choose which cause to support.

Then there's MicroPlace. From MicroPlace's press release,

Through MicroPlace’s secure platform, everyday people can purchase investments – for as little as $100 – from microfinance security issuers. MicroPlace also enables investors to direct the impact of their investment to a specific country and microfinance institution in the developing world. The microfinance institutions use the funds to make small loans to the working poor, who in turn use the loans to start or expand small businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.

MicroPlace offers a portal where profit-conscious investors can get involved in microfinance without totally compromising on rate of return.

When Bank Negara heard that an NGO was starting a microfinance project in the country, they immediately dispatched their officers to meet the NGO chief. The BNM officers mentioned about the need to have a license.

Kiva and MicroPlace has shown the way for NGOs to operate effectively, affecting the lives of many needy people without the bureaucracy and strong arm of a central bank.

Anniversary

Launching a new Rotary club…is like…launching a great ship….The sea is said to be a teacher of truth and in sailing we find the salt of reality. Rotarians and likeminded men of goodwill can come to recognize that we are one people around the earth, and that we can do much to bring harmony and understanding between brothers who may dwell across expansive oceans…or perhaps next door.

Wiser, Younger

Should young people be subject to restrictions imposed for their safety by adults, or should they be free to make their own choices, and - inevitably perhaps - suffer as a result?

There are vast differences in the ability of children after puberty to guide their new, more powerful selves through the next few turbulent years. For this reason, the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that young people be entitled to additional, protective rights until the age of 18. The idea of remaining officially a child for almost two decades is a catch-all solution, designed to reduce risks for the most vulnerable. Yet it hardly describes the experiences of many young people.

Indeed, we might choose to see contribution and independence as key indicators of de facto adulthood: the degree to which these describe a child's life indicate the extent to which he or she has assumed an adult role, even if it is not always recognised as such. This leads to a number of conundrums. In the West, the principles of rationality and individualism dictate that offspring are brought up to be independent in thought and deed. Yet, largely thanks to lengthy education, Western children are kept utterly dependent upon their parents long after many of their counterparts in the South. There, the situation can be reversed: older family members may well be dependent upon the child for income or labour; yet children often grow up in patriarchal societies, which attach little importance to their views. In parts of Africa, meanwhile, a grown man may not be acknowledged as fully adult if he cannot provide for others. One might be a 'child' at the age of 40!

Given this huge variety of abilities and experiences, it is almost impossible to reconcile young people's autonomy and protection without reference to the individual concerned. And, notwithstanding the UN's definition of childhood, there are many under-18s whose ability to contribute and take responsibility we should, perhaps, be celebrating.

I suggest that such young people demonstrate that autonomy and protection can actually go hand in hand: Part of protecting children is empowering them. Allowing them to take responsibility for themselves and giving them the confidence to learn what are acceptable risks and to learn to protect themselves. Silencing children is not a way of protecting them.

Because vaccine was never in short supply

Thanks to those whose compassion wasn't either.

When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.

Water management issues affect our food supply, as it takes 2,000 to 5,000 liters of water to produce the daily food intake of one person. To process one whole chicken before it gets to the supermarket, it takes up 27 liters of water. Inefficient agricultural practices such as flooding entire fields, strain water sources.

We know today that our country is facing increasing demands for water, while our water sources are showing signs of stress such as rising pollutant levels or unsustainable rates of water withdrawal which are likely to cause water shortages in places where it is needed. Can businesses “connect the drops” to better understand their relationship to water and develop and implement water sustainability strategies?

Water questions that businesses can answer for themselves:

1. In what keyareasdoes the business directlyand indirectlyrely onand impact waterthroughout the valuechain?


2. What isthe status orvulnerability of water sources used or impacted by the business?


3. What are the business risks linked to the organization’s water uses and impacts, taking into account the vulnerability of key water sources affected by these uses and impacts?


4. What opportunities exist to proactively address costs and potential risks to the business associated with water use and impacts?


5. What are the company’s goals related to water sustainability?


6. How can the organization be best engaged in pursuing a water sustainability strategy?
7. Go to http://www.rotarycyberjaya.org/Newsletters/CONNECTIONS-Aug05-01.pdf

I Asked For Prosperity, God Sent Me to Cyberjaya

You know you have arrived in the heart of Cyberjaya when it feels as if you have entered a foreign country, waited forever for the traffic lights to turn green and see office workers are all in jeans and T-shirts. Nothing is as it appears. There are no yellow courier service trucks making their runs out of the DHL building. Inside the Shell building there is a petrol pump, but the Shell staff members do not refuel there. No, you can’t do any banking at the HSBC building. As you enter the MSC Innovation Centre, innovation seems to have stopped at the gate where the attendant kicks the orange cone to the front of your car, prompting you to stop and gives you a parking ticket before removing the cone to let you in. Lunch time crowd at the Street Mall is more multinational than Malaysian. Café Le Frog at Ericsson building serves no frog meat, but only good food. No one believed that I almost bumped into Michael Schumacher at Cyberview Lodge. But that’s OK, because these are the very reasons I have come to love Cyberjaya.

I must say that after God created the rest of world, He saved the best for Malaysia’s first intelligent city, Cyberjaya. But its true beauty is still hidden. From Google Earth, Cyberjaya is a large mass of land under construction. I guess that satellite picture was taken the year when I came to Cyberjaya in 2001 to start my new career with a start-up company. Today, Cyberjaya is a vast contradiction. Setia Haruman’s premium real estate lining the magnificent Putrajaya lake provides a sneak preview of Cyberjaya’s true beauty to come. That lakeside is my stretch of heaven on Earth and my all time favorite jogging track - the awesome panorama, the therapeutic tranquility and the cooling breeze keeps me running for hours. The start up company that I have served since has grown good for listing in such a short period, and if it does get listed, its CEO and owners will certainly join the many who have gained from the innovative opportunities in Cyberjaya. Ten years before, I could not even imagine so many MNCs locating in Cyberjaya, providing so many employment opportunities and so many start-ups thriving.

Cyberjaya is truly a city borne out of creative innovation and innovation is what makes it prosper. Take for example the job that I am doing with public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI is cryptic stuff that belongs to the domain of cryptographers. Some enterprising folks with innovative ideas decided to create value with it, and Cyberjaya provided that fertile environment. Today, PKI secures our Internet transactions such as Internet banking transactions and assures the millions who rely on the security and trustworthiness of the Internet to do business. And ten years ago, I could not make a decent presentation about PKI as I could not fully decrypt how it works and its business value. But again that’s OK because enduring the growing pains of a new career and those of a new city has its rewards.

Abel Ahing: Engaging Young People In Community Building

Communities abound with opportunities for young people to contribute, but their participation is too often marginalized and tokenized. In our effort to raise young people, they are often the objects, seldom the subjects of adults’ actions. Our country’s youth programmes tend to start with their needs and problems (drug abuse, smoking, bohsia, etc) instead of with their gifts, talents, knowledge and skills.

The actions of adults often deprive our youth of the experience necessary for fulfilling their roles as citizens and contributors to the community. Our communities suffer when we fail to empower all members of our society, but especially when we fail those who represent our nation’s future.

To be successful in our work with young people, it is necessary for us to re-examine how we view young people and their role in our society. Initial feedback from the Cool-to-Care programme of the Rotary Club of Cyberjaya Centennial, suggests that young folks from as young as six years old, express strong yearning for purpose, for meaning, for ways to be useful to the wider community, especially in non-patronizing, intergenerational efforts.

Adults need to reconsider the traditional approach of talking down to young people and patronizing them. Whether grade A students or drop-outs, young people can help build our communities when they are engaged as individuals with skills and capacities, with ideas and enthusiasm.

In consideration of the above factors, the Cool-to-Care Programme was initiated and being continually developed to help children build their potential as productive, responsible, caring and contributing member of society through positive experiences. Through positive experiences in service, youngsters build assets and competencies that allow them to function and contribute in their daily lives. The mission of the programme is to:

1. Teach children that it is indeed cool to care, rewarding them for responsible behavior, fair play, safety, and community service.


2. Foster in young people, habits of service, the ethics of care and service, and a commitment to the common good.


3. Engage youngsters in meeting their basic personal and social needs to be safe, feel cared for, be valued, and be useful.

Rewarding participants for both effort and accomplishment is an important aspect of the programme. Awards are given to deserving young people for various accomplishments, including reporting vandalism, preventing or stopping bullying, taking pride in school grounds, and showing safety or fair play. Other awards include fire awareness and safety around the home, voluntary work within the community, taking first aid training and assisting the fire, police, or ambulance services. Eventually, the programme will incorporate the Anugerah Remaja Perdana award, which is the equivalent of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, operated by the Rakan Muda Programme.

The Cool-to-Care Camp held during school holidays is another core component of the programme. The camp provides experiential learning opportunities in a safe environment. Camp programme is being continually developed to raise children’s self-esteem, to promote the development of the attitudes, skills and information to make good life choices, to recognize and resist the direct and subtle pressures that influence them to experiment with alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. These outcomes are promoted through five core values continuously reinforced throughout the programme: Responsibility, Effort, Attitude, Community, Honour – R.E.A.C.H . Visit

cooltocare.rotarycyberjaya.org for more information.

Our hope is that by developing better life skills and by serving something greater than themselves, young people will help meet vital community needs, and become responsible and engaged citizens.

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