Translator: Theresa Ranft Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Thank you.
Have you ever considered volunteering
to make this world a little bit better?
But you didn't have the time,
it was too complicated to squeeze into your schedule, and so on.
Well, now you can.
Now there's an app for that.
(Quiet laughter)
But let's start somewhere else.
Imagine you're blind.
Whoa, you're good!
Imagine you're standing in your kitchen, cooking dinner.
The recipe says, "Add a can of coconut milk."
You open your kitchen cupboard.
On the shelf, there's three cans.
You know that only one of them is coconut milk.
What do you do?
Well, you might gamble ...
(Laughter)
... not a good idea, I can tell you.
(Laughter)
What you do is you put on your jacket, grab the cans and your cane,
and for the second time that day, you walk over to your neighbor
thinking, "He's so helpful, I'd better ask him over for coffee soon."
You ring his doorbell and ask him to pick up the coconut milk.
There are a lot of situations like this in a blind person's everyday life -
situations where you need a pair of eyes just for a short moment.
We all know situations like: When does this milk expire?
How do I keep track of my electricity use?
Or checking yourself in the mirror.
It's OK to ask your neighbor for help once in a while,
but there is a limit,
and you don't want to push your luck too much.
The reason why I am so engaged in this
is because I'm visually impaired myself.
I was born with a normal 180-degree vision,
and over the years it has decreased to now five degrees.
If I look straight ahead right now, I can see two people.
Thank you for coming!
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now I work for a Danish blind society,
and in a three-year period,
my job was to visit blind people, in their home, as their consultant,
advising about how to cook with visual impairment.
And I very often heard people say,
"Oh, if I just had a pair of eyes, once or twice a day,
I could really do a whole lot more on my own,
and I wouldn't have to ask friends and family for help."
Be My Eyes is my little magic trick
where, as a blind, you can ask for help without really asking,
where you can let people into your house
without really letting them into your house.
Be My Eyes is an iPhone app,
an app that makes a video connection between the blind person's iPhone
and a normally-sighted person's iPhone.
The first move was among my blind friends.
They already used Skype or FaceTime on their iPhones
to make this video connection.
But they still have to call their friends and family,
and again, ask for help.
What makes Be My Eyes different
is instead of calling your friends and family,
you call a Be My Eyes volunteer.
And as a blind, you can be sure that the volunteer
is more than willing to help you
because that's why he or she signed up to be a volunteer.
The Be My Eyes volunteer just takes a look at his iPhone, and says,
"Is the coconut milk on the left?"
without even entering your house.
And you don't have to offer him coffee.
You can just say thank you and get on with the cooking.
(Quiet laughter)
Be My Eyes is a whole new way to be a volunteer.
It's the most easy and convenient way to do it.
And I like to call it micro-volunteering.
And you can volunteer from everywhere:
whenever you have a break at work,
standing in line at the supermarket,
or even lying on your couch at home.
Whenever we have a break, many of us play casual games,
like Angry Birds, Jelly Splash, or Fruit Ninja.
I love the names!
I think we can do better.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Instead of ... (Laughing)
... instead of playing casual games, we can do casual micro-volunteering.
And I hope, I'm sure Be My Eyes will be an alternative
for those who want to do better.
To make this a reality, we have set up Be My Eyes as a non-profit organization,
and our goal is to connect blind and sighted people all over the world.
Being able to see yourself in the mirror every morning
is not something we can take for granted.
But with your eyes and Be My Eyes,
we can look into the mirror together
and maybe make this world a little bit better.
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Cheering)