Introducing the 50/50 project

tim.malbon

We interrupt normal programming to make way for an important request from our friend Tim Malbon, co-founder of Made by Many:

Good for Nothing asked us to help them to raise some money by making stuff. There is a HUGE need: the UN has declared a famine in East Africa and it’s massive:

So… crisis in summary: much bigger need than ever/much smaller response than normal, huge and urgent man-made catastrophe about to unfold. If we do nothing we’re all going to be watching millions and millions of people dying live on TV and the Internet.

It’s so sad to reflect that this catastrophe is totally avoidable – and that, counter-intuitively, this has the effect of making a person feel in some ways less empowered. We know it’s happening and we still can’t seem to do anything. But this got us thinking about the direct power of citizens and like-minded folk using networks to come together and fix things. We’ve seen some amazing stuff in the past week – real people, citizens, have come together to support each other and take the lead with some direct intervention.

These examples prove that it can be done. We are trying to harness the same goodness to raise money to save the people of East Africa.

We realise it’s a bit insane to take this on. The received wisdom says we can’t possibly succeed, that we can’t make a difference. The scale of the problem is too huge.

And we know there are rules and protocols and systems and blah, and everyone is busy – yes, but we’re still going to try because if people don’t start being extreme and taking risks we’re all going to stand by and watch millions die…

We’ve been working on it for a week and a bit and it’s evolved as a plan, changing every day. Here’s what we’ve done:

We need teams of makers, hackers and players to get involved.
Please be in touch.