The other day I saw this speech from
the singar Bono from YouTube in last TED event
I was really amazed because he said that we are so close
to eradicate polio from the surface of the earth.
I thought it was amazing and I couldn't help
but imagine how the world would be such a better place
if much more celebrities would come together and try to solve world issues
But the problem is that there are much more global issues
than celebrities are willing to use their fame for the good of society
what I would like to share with you today is
what can we do if we are part of 99% if we don't have neither influences, if we don't have a very nice voice.
What can we do to change the world?
But before I go there
I want to tell you a bit about why I started this adventure
and a bit about my background
My parents were Vietnamese war refugees
After the war, they escaped on the boat with a hope of better life
Thanks for the support of non-profit, the Red Cross, we were able to realocate to Switzerland.
I was really fortunate to grown up in Switzerland
and my only exposure, untill I was 15, to global issues such as poverty and hunger
was things that I was seeing on tv
Looking on the screen was feeling like you were watching a movie
and it was hard to relate
and I wasn't so comelled to actually make anything to try to solve it because
I thought that I couldn't do anything to make such a big change
So I went to Vietnam when I was fifteen
with my parents. It was the first time and I was able to see poverty with my own eyes
and what it made me realize seeing those kids in the street trying to beg for money
was that I was actually quite close
from that life and only things that separated me from that life was that
the fact that my parents took a boat in 1980
So I've felt really fortunate and that really changed a way I saw the world
When I graduated from university
I felt a bit like a black sheep because
around me all my friends wanted to work for big companies
and try to make it a very good living. You know, in switzerland,
many people wanted to work for banks or these kind of thing
But for me, I had this kind of desire to contribute and give back to the society
but at that time I was not so much familiar with the world social entrepreneur
So I was not so sure what I could do at that time
So I started travelling and arrived, in 2007, in Japan where
Actually there were big culture shock
But something that really remarked me was the difference that we had
in terms of donation made to NPOs in Japan
This number, $5 Billion in 2010
This is the amount that the individuals have donated to non-profits in Japan
If you compare to the United States,
this number is actually $220 Billion which is a massive difference
I really couldn't understand how
2 countries that were so close in terms of GDP ranking
had such a massive difference after all
If you take into the daily life, $5 billion represents only $ 40/person a year
And for the american people, it means they are giving $ 700 a year
So I started asking to my japanese friends
How come there are such big differences
And they told me a couple of reasons
They said,first of all, there's not a big donation culture in Japan
And there is not really tax incentives
So that some reasons
Other told me that's religious matter There was a talk about religion
Well you know the Christianity is not so common in Japan And it means that
people are not so willing to donate when they go to the church
And finally another Japanese people said that we are used to that
the government actually takes care of the people in need
so the tax that we're paying to the government should take care of such issues
I found a last reason
and it was the fact that in Japan the number of non-profit organization is
actually a very low compared to the United States
There's only 50,000 NPO in Japan
where as in the US, there are more than 1 million non-profit organization
So imagine that much less people who are trying to raise awareness about global issues
then much less people who are trying to ask for donation from the people
I tried to challenge to myself and I try to find a way how can we increase the number
of people who are not so much concerned about global issues
in a way that would bring some massive change
I try to look for clues in the current world and I saw that there were things
like concerts that became charity concert
So basically mixing entertainment and fun to social contribution is a way to go
Others like to do sports and some people run marathon
some other people also organize some charity run
But I'm not really a runner And I'm terrible at playing music 0:05:48.580,0:05:54.909 Actually I'm better at playing video games and I myself a gamer
sometimes I think that I played a bit too much
how could I justify to my friends, to my parents, to my girlfriend
that playing game was something good
so that was a bit of what I was trying to prove
1 billion players worldwide right now
This represents more than 3 billions hour played every week
That's huge
It's not necessarily a waste, I want to say
Because that represents more than $76 billion that's going to be spend this year
So I think that there is a way,maybe, to try to take a bit of that money
and try to use for the good of society
I believe that there should be a way
for connecting games with the social world
And corporation like Zynga are actually taking the lead
I don't know if you are familiar with the game called FarmVille
It's a game where you can actually spend your money to build and get a bigger farm
and actually you can spend your money to contribute to society
how it's done is when there was an earthquake in Haiti in 2010
users, players were able to buy some digital items that could be used in the game
but this money will be distributed to the non-profit that you see below
and until this day more than $30 million has been donated to non-profit organizations
So that brought some kind of very important change
What am I doing in this whole thing? I'd like to call myself a social gamificator
So if you are not familiar with the term gamification
I'd like to describe it as
the art of turning something is boring and troublesome
such as making donation into something that is more fun
My attempt is to enter the crowd funding platform.
You saw the super amaizing platform Catapult earlier
They made an excellent video I wish I had the same
Actually I would say it's quite close to what they are trying to accomplish.
They're non-profit organization right there who are presenting the activities
and explain you know what they need and then the user go to the platform
and decide how they want their money to be spanned and also
how they can contribute even if they don't have money,
they can still share their projects with their friends on Facebook and Twitter
but the thing that we have a bit innovative is that we added the game elements to it
So that when you make a donation or where you share projects to your friends on Facebook
we would actually give you some points
And both points could be used to get some of rewards
So you could be receiving some rewards from non-profit organization
maybe they would start with giving you a t-shirt
but really if you are super active donor, maybe they could invite you to see the project
that they're doing with your own eyes
And something that we also innovated is that we try to connect those project with corporation
Corporation now try to do a bit of what they called Corporate Social Responsibility
and we try to do the matching between corporation and nonp-rofit organization on our platform
But I think we can do much more than this
I think that's what I show until now was mainly virtual and gaming industry
But I think that in the future,
there should be centraal platform that measure all the activities that you're doing that are social
into one social profile that you would have online
So you could be donating going to charity concert, maybe donating some blood to save life of the people
and the point that you would collect with actually rewards you
just like airline's loyalty program
The more you would contribute to the society, the more of higher status
and opportunity that you would have in life
So I think the future is really about building
a market of engaging people to do change
I talked about non-profit and game sector.
But I think that non-profit should also talk with corporation. I think corporation has advantage to discuss
with non-profit.sometimes they can find some ideas of how to reduce their CO2 emission
for example. And for corporation, it's definitely a way to reach more people to corporation
who already have a massive distribution channel. And they can communicate with millions of
consumer.
So what I have done today, presenting different ideas is a very small step for mankind. But
I believe that is going to grow. I think that the more there will be player who are
socially conscious, the more we will be some impacts in this world.
I really want to finish saying 2 advices.1 for non-profit and 1 for gamer.So for non-profit,
try not to avoid the world of business and games.I think you have a lot of things you
can learn from this 2 sectors and lots of benefit that you can get by trying to work
with them. And finally, if you are gamer like me, keep cool, keep on playing. But make sure
that you choose a right game.
Thank you very much