A while back, the GlobalOneness Project people introduced me to CharityFocus.org co-founder Nipun Mehta. CharityFocus, founded in 1999 (I know, I'm slow to catch on), is now a giant web of "kindness ventures" centered around the giving economy, or the practice of generosity, both giving freely and receiving what is offered. I met with Nipun in a coffee shop last week, and I don't mean to be dramatic here, but he may have changed my life.
When we think of people living lives of service and giving -- well, when I think of that, I think of Mother Teresa and Ghandi, not the man who looks like a pranky grad student sitting across from me at the coffee shop. He doesn't say exactly what field he was in when he was at UC Berkeley, but I think it was computer science, since the main forum for his giving-economy ventures seems to be online. If it seems like I know too little about someone I interviewed, mea culpa. You can read more than I can tell you in his own words here. Before our meeting, he said he prefers to have agenda-less, face-to-face meetings with no time constraints (how refreshing is that?!) and he sent me the most wonderful brief on the philosophy of CharityFocus to give me background on what they're up to.
In brief, Nipun Mehta, the tennis-playing computer science/philosophy major, is Generosity Guy, but he'll be embarrassed that I put it that way.
Beginning with Daily Good (which now reaches more than 60,000 readers per day) from his days at Sun Microsystems, he has literally focused on charity, or generosity, since his teens. Charity Focus, the Smile Revolution at www.helpothers.org, and a handful of other online giving-economy projects are all based on the karmic proposition that life is like a wheel, and whatever you put out comes around to you in the form you most need, when you need it. Locally and internationally, a web of goodness and connection has woven around Nipun and his connections, everywhere from Wednesday night meditations for anyone in Santa Clara and Saturday night dinners at Karma Kitchen in Berkeley.
Nipun and his wife, Guri, after creating CharityFocus with a few other friends and relatives, took a very long walk, in India once and wrote stories about their experiences of giving and receiving. Now back in the U.S., they both live a modest life, volunteer at CharityFocus, and as far as I can tell, spend most of their time giving. Giving time, giving ideas, giving meals to the local monastery, giving wonderful Internet content.
When I met with Nipun recently, I didn't show up with an agenda, as requested, but I did have lots of questions (which arguably could be considered an agenda if I insisted on asking them all, but I didn't). I wanted to know how it worked, this giving economy. How could Nipun give so much away, and rely so blithely on receiving from others, and not worry about the electric bill? This, as chance would have it, was one of the questions I did not ask, because, as is the case with Nipun, I was getting so much of what I needed, I didn't need to get what I wanted. Get it?
Instead, he drew diagrams of the Smile Card revolution, which was timely for me because I had just ordered my cards and was eagerly awaiting their arrival. The diagrams got me even more excited. Nipun explained how the little idea to distribute free pay-it-forward kindness cards, which you give to someone after you do something nice for them, had grown into a web site full of stories, and how that grew into a newsletter, and how now, four years later, thousands of people share kindness stories every day, pay each other karma bucks, redeemable for more Smile Cards ... and, well, I still don't understand all of it.
What I do understand is that Nipun and his friends have created their own powerful, benevolent virus -- online and in the hearts of all they touch. Kindness, it turns out, is extremely contagious. Once you get a hit of anonymous giving, you can't help but put your own small act of kindness into the pond and watch the ripples as your Smile Card makes its way from one person to another. It's hard not to start dreaming of inventive new ways to pass on the virus. I've put my Smile Cards in the front of my purse for easy access, and am on high alert for someone I can be kind to. What are the possibilities for our world with a virus like that on the loose?
Though I don't know all the details of how Nipun lives in a giving economy, I know that he's keeping the promise he made to his parents when he convinced them that this was the right path for him. He is self-sustaining, which was their request. I'm guessing from reading his blogs, from my Google searches, and from the smile that greeted me as I approached him, that he's quite self-sustaining, and is possibly helping to sustain the rest of us in ways we can't imagine yet.
You can join Nipun and thousands of other CharityFocus volunteers, readers, and participants by clicking any of these links and choosing what appeals to you from the wide array of their kindness offerings. But those Smile cards, what an idea. What would it be like to have several million of us out there every day trying to find someone to help anonymously?
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