Madhu and Meghna's visit to Stanford

Madhu and Meghna are modern-day heroes, who've followed their heart to serve society by making films that inspire us to serve. We had the good fortune last Saturday to hear their personal story, interspersed with clips of films they've made and films they've inspired others to make. It all started when, at a critical moment of decision-making, they received a $3,000 state-of-the-art film camera with a smile card. Until that point, they were wavering, with their heart was pulling them to start a venture to inspire spiritual filmmaking in India, but their pockets were empty. To this day, they do not know who gifted them the camera. But they took the gift as a sign that when there is a great desire to do good, the means will follow.

So, Madhu and Meghna decided to trust the universe and start their journey, and boy, what a journey! They've founded Mam Movies (Mam means "I am" in Sanskrit), which among other things, organizes a yearly event, titled "I am the Change," where 101 filmmaker teams get paired with 101 NGOs to tell stories of service in 101 hours. The event is a work-in-progress with Madhu and Meghna innovating on the format each year. Here is their open-source film store (where everything on display is a gift). Bringing the gift economy to filmmaking is a terrific idea. A new initiative of Mam Movies is Metta Media.

We've snagged them to blog for Sarvodaya (check Whole Films), so stay tuned on their adventures. Their work is a great gift to society and we are very grateful to have been touched by these two unique individuals and we look forward to a future visit from them.

Here are some photographs from their visit:

Group Discussions...	Madhu explaining a point...
Sarvodaya and CharityFocus friends..	Varun, Meghna and Kapeesh..

Outside the Bechtel International Center, Stanford University

# posted by Capital Socialist/Social Capitalist @ 11:16 AM 1 comments

Cylinders of Success

Last week, about 25 students and community members attended a 2-hour workshop with Jullien Gordon, the "Purpose Finder". With Jullien as our fearless leader, we each answered the golden question: What is my personal and professional purpose?

Jullien has developed a day-long course, called "Driving School for Life", that leads students through a process of articulating one's own purpose. The analogy he takes is of an automobile: to drive smoothly along the highway of life, we need to make sure we have all the essential components. The components are what he calls the 8 P's, a.k.a. 8 cylinders of Success: Principles (my dashboard), Passions (my keys), Problems (my fuel), People (my motor), Positioning (my lane), Pioneers (my pace cars), Picture (my road map), and Possibility (my momentum). Jullien has carefully conducted research on personal and professional success (Csikszentmihalyi, Gladwell, Poras et. al.) and studied many of world's most successful/happy/passionate people (Bill Gates, Oprah, Steve Irwin the "Crocodile Hunter"). The Driving School is a systematic process for putting each of us on a path to living in alignment with the common themes Jullien found in his research.

We went through filling out our 8 cylinders on beautiful posters that Jullien had for each of us. We also did some interesting activities.

Among the favorites were:

• Filling out the 'Dashboard': What are three ways I measure my success in life and work?
• Writing out careers that start with each letter of the alphabet, from A-Z. Lesson: There are so many things out there that we can do; open yourself up to the possibility
• Text message 3 friends, asking them what they think you are passionate about (loved this one!)
• Taking your keys out of your pocket and asking yourself, "What are all of these keys for, and do I really need them?" One student had a house key and a duplicate on the same chain :)

Personally, I got a lot out of the course. I realized that my number-one passion is currently meditation :) since I make time for it even when I don't have any time. The course concludes with writing a personal purpose statement. I arrived (and was quite delighted) with "Improve my community through self-improvement". I think the most valuable aspect of the course was being walked through the process of actually articulating (on paper) things that often just stay floating in your head. I think this helps focus on concrete objectives, and, at least in my case, helps reveal one's true motivations and intentions.

I wasn't the only one who felt the power of the course. Jullien received numerous comments about how helpful they found it. I observed smiles all around :) I think one great testament to the value was that most of the students stuck through the course even though we started an hour late and a band was blaring next door for the final 20 minutes :)


It was really inspirational to be with Jullien. The man oozes positive energy. A 26-year-old who has found his life's passion, is unflinchingly pursuing it, and doing it all while positively impacting others and keeping a smile on his face. Just amazing. He traveled especially from NY to give us this special 2-hour version of his course, which was itself offered as a gift to us (the full course has a fee). Not to mention he offers Driving School for Life as part of his full time business while also writing a book. Don't know how he packs it all in, but I do know he's one of those cars on the highway of life that you look at and just admire. Keep riding brother!

# posted by Neil Patel @ 12:16 AM 1 comments

A response to Nipun Mehta's talk

This article refers to a March 2 talk by Nipun Mehta -- here's the full video.

My perspective on Nipun Mehta is that of an outsider -- to Sarvodaya, to pay-it-forward schemes like the Karma Kitchen, and even to writing blog posts (this is my first). But it is impossible to spend more than five minutes with the man and not come away sharing his sense of infectious enthusiasm, awe, and wonder of the world.

Faithful readers and members of Sarvodaya will doubtlessly be able to extract layers of meaning from Nipun's talk. My personal and admittedly inexperienced takeaway was of the idea of positive deviance, a kind of willful obstinacy in the service of public good. Nipun's primary example was that of an old sweeper working in a school, subsisting on wages that even by the standards of rural India are a pittance. As she would sometimes find the dropped pencils and erasers of schoolchildren, the sweeper would collect and save her findings for those even less fortunate than she. Once she had accumulated enough, she would give them all away to children who couldn't afford school. The woman today is still a sweeper, still deviant, and still collecting pencils for children.

Nipun's point was that there is no system in place today that properly encourages this pattern of positive deviance, no system that can adequately reward the woman's behavior. He called it "the long tail of love," the cumulative contributions of thousands and millions like the sweeper. Organizations like Charity Focus or the Karma Kitchen, Nipun explained, exist to amplify this positive deviance. The internet allows for "the aggregation of small things," for the trust paradigm to replace the fear paradigm in giving. The cynic in me wanted to object that such behavior is unsustainable and hopelessly naive, but all I saw in the room that day were converts.

Aman Kumar | aik@stanford.edu

# posted by someone @ 5:45 AM 0 comments

Gift Economy

Thanks to the many hours volunteered by Sandeep Reddy (MS&E 09), we now have Nipun's talk online. Many Sarvodaya members attended this talk earlier in the year. Just like his earlier talk helped us set the tone for Sarvodaya at Stanford when it first started, this talk cements our fundamentals and reminds us why we have come together. A must-watch, if you are new to the gift economy.

You can watch this in full-screen mode by clicking on the TV-shaped icon below.


The class in which Nipun spoke, Designing a Free Society, has also gone gift economy. You can listen to all the class discussions online.

# posted by Capital Socialist/Social Capitalist @ 5:03 PM 1 comments