A Brief Future of Time

There are some things that can only be learned over time.  Such as, well, learning about time iteslf!  That’s why I have appealed to the geniuses of our human race for intellectual quotes on time.

They are all short quotes, because I have a short attention span.  I have selected my top 9 in preparation for the Vancouver Time Auction, happening at 6pm on July 9th, at the UBC Student Union Building (Facebook Event).

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.  ~Dion Boucicault

Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.  ~Zall’s Second Law

The time you think you’re missing, misses you too.  ~Ymber Delecto

Watches are so named as a reminder – if you don’t watch carefully what you do with your time, it will slip away from you.  ~Drew Sirtors

Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst.  ~Willaim Penn

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.  ~Louis Hector Berlioz

What may be done at any time will be done at no time.  ~Scottish Proverb

Time is money.  ~Benjamin Franklin

1. Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.  ~Dion Boucicault

2. Time is like the wind, it lifts the light and leaves the heavy.  ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

3. How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you’re on.  ~Zall’s Second Law

4. The time you think you’re missing, misses you too.  ~Ymber Delecto

5. Watches are so named as a reminder – if you don’t watch carefully what you do with your time, it will slip away from you.  ~Drew Sirtors

6. Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst.  ~Willaim Penn

7. Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.  ~Louis Hector Berlioz

8. What may be done at any time will be done at no time.  ~Scottish Proverb

9. Time is money.  ~Benjamin Franklin (we used this in our tagline… thank you Mr. $100 bill!)

Sold!

Everyone is loaded at a Time Auction… might as well get something :).  Bid your volunteering hours for over $7,000 in products and services at the Vancouver Time Auction!

Going once… going twice… go on Thursday, July 9th, 2009!

– David, Co-founder

Best Ball

A couple weeks ago I was invited to attend Youth in Motion’s Annual Golf Tournament.  When I arrived, I was really nervous, because there weren’t many people eating breakfast… meaning they were all out on the range practicing.  Oh, and I’m nervous because I suck at golf 😛

They had good apple juice.

When I met my foursome, they asked me how many games I’ve played before.  I said “one”.  They said “this year?”  That really boosted my confidence.  These guys get out at least 15 times a summer.  Good thing Marc, who happens to own his own golf course (see how good they are?!) gave each of us a dozen golfballs as a gift.  They’re all very modest though, especially my cart-mate, Bill Charters.  He is cousin to Owen Charters, Executive Director at CanadaHelps.org who has been supportive of the Sola Caritas idea since its early days.

They had two 18-hole courses going at the same time - lots of people supporting the cause!

Bill confidently steps up to have a swing.

From left to right: Gary, Bill, Marc. Incidentally, Gary made the putt.

The game format is called Best Ball, which basically means everyone hits from the best shot out of the four.  Imagine if you could do everything like that.  Final exam?  No problem – everyone gets the mark of the top student in the class.  At the job?  No worries – everyone gets paid the same as the top-paid employee.

As comical as that might be, I believe there are certain circumstances that merit a best-ball approach.  For example, when non-profits are looking for best practices, take it from the organization that has done it the best.  When looking for an efficient way to find, record, and verify volunteers, take it from Sola Caritas.  Everyone wins – especially those being helped.  Sola Caritas has consistently tried to emulate the best aspects of other sites to best meet our users’ needs, ’cause hey – we’re not all Tiger Woods!

 

Technology these days... although as Bill eloquently put, "it's great to know how far it is, but at the end of the day, we still just grab a club and whack it."

 

If you can't see, that's a can of beer. That's one way besides technology to improve your game.

+ Daver Woods, Co-founder (the plus instead of “-” is for how we ended the game… +10…ish)

You-kulele

Go ahead, think of Buffett.  What comes to mind?

Cash… sage… Cherry Coke?

Ever thought of him,

As a ukulele bloke?

 

Great as a player, back in the day,

Cooler as a teacher now they say,

Each lower-income girl he helps,

Always listens, sings, and strums her troubles away.

 

Good lord knows he has $40 bill,

Comes second only to, well, Bill;

Even so, he chose not to buy the ukuleles,

And using a fundraiser instead to fulfill.

 

Great he only bought seventeen Ukuleles,

‘Cause he could have bought a million,

Everyone should treasure what they are given,

A lot like a country to its civilians.

 

Go take charge of your own community,

Can’t just hope for shooting stars,

Engage yourself – do it now!

Apprentice from Buffett’s 4-string guitars.

 

Credits:

Poem inspired by the Spoken Poetry at UNITY Charity’s kickoff show.

First letters of each sentence inspired by the strings of a ukulele (except the baritone ones).

Sola Caritas – inspired by you, the people that – like Buffett – are doing things to grow philanthropy, not just harvest it.

You've go the whooole world... in your hands...

– D. S. Wen-lliot, Co-Founder

X-traodinary Feet

Communication is key in many things.

For example, today I wanted to execute (what I thought was) a really cool move in soccer.  I was to cut across to the right, and fake a shot.  At which point my teammate would cut across left and since I was supposed to have totally faked out the goal keeper, my teammate would go in for the easy goal.

Long story short, we almost collided.  I jumped to avoid him, landed on the ball, and twisted my ankle.  Oh yes, and I was yelling the aptly named “X-play!” the entire time leading up to the fall.

My highly-stretched point is this.  We all want to do awesome things.  If we can just communicate that properly, magic can happen.  Sola Caritas’s profile page can help people effectively communicate their philanthropic awesomeness to potential employers, schools, and colleagues alike.  

Confucius once said “He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.”  We’re so happy to see so many people who have created profiles in one short week.  Not only that, we have been greatly inspired by the good they have selflessly done for others!

Keep striving to do and secure good things for your community and for yourselves.  Keep striving for that super cool play.  Let us do the work in helping you record and share your amazing feats.

 

Somethin' like that...

– David Beckham, Co-founder

2 Hip

Sola Caritas now has an extensive database of over 750 opportunities!  They are all pretty much in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) for now, but we are working with partners in Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa to get more areas covered so stay tuned.

I would just like to point out two pretty hip opportunities that I came across.

1. UNITY Charity – Internship to experience positive hip hop.  I’ve seen Mike the Founder dance and do tricks with his hat – and trust me – you should too.

2. Center for Addiction and Mental Health – DJ (Turntablist).  How many of you have heard of volunteering by being a DJ?

You can sign up for these opportunities right now on Sola Caritas. Soon, we will have our social profile section complete, whereby each opportunity you sign up for will be fed to a public profile for people to see what great work you are doing.

Let us know if you find other cool opportunities on our site!

 

Oh, he's totally volunteering.

– David, Co-Founder

S to the C is ready!

Have you ever slept through the pre-flight announcements on flights?  I have.  I once stayed up all night at the airport watching shows online (’cause I missed the last flight of the night and didn’t want to spend taxi money going home – but that’s another story).  Later, when I got on the plane, I was out like a lightbulb and woke up when we were at the arrival gate.

But maybe, if this guy had been on the flight, I wouldn’t have done that.  A flight attendent at Southwest Airlines (score one for word of mouth marketing) RAPPED the entire pre-flight announcements.  Ya – rap.  You know, when you say things really fast that rhyme and it mesmerizes you so much it’s cool?  Yeah – that!

I think if we all put our lives – whatever it is we do – to a fun beat, things would get done faster, better, and we’d all be happier and more in awe after the fact.  

I hope Sola Caritas can be that rapper in the philanthropy industry.  From our design team to our developers, and from our dream of bein’ social entrepreneurs, let’s shake up what people thought of as boring ol’ givin’, and start helpin’ ’em see that SC’s already livin’.

That’s my attempt at saying – we’re launched for our stage one (volunteering functions) – check us out here!!  www.solacaritas.com.

Peace.

 

MC SC!

– D-dawg, Co-founda

Who wants to be a (social) millionaire?

What would attract you to do homework more?

A) An A+ on your report card;

B) Fear of parental scolding; or,

C) $1 Million USD cash.

I’m not going to lie… choice A is somewhat attractive… choice B will probably happen anyways… but I would have to go with C as my final answer.

I bring this up because I recently re-stumbled upon the Millennium Prize Problems – a set of 7 math problems put forth by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.  The cool part is, $1 Million is awarded for each correct answer.

Back in grade 7, I attempted these questions (in 9 years, only 1 has been solved).  I remember thinking I was hot on the trail of an answer that no astro-physicist had thought of yet, already planning the house I would buy with the new riches.  If it weren’t for the $1 Million, I don’t think I would have tried so hard, knowing my mathematical limitations…

Do you think people would try harder if there were rewards granted for people finding solutions to social problems?  Like… $1 Million for each Millennium Development Goal resolved?  How about something smaller like helping Julio buy supplies so that he can make furniture and get his family out of debt?  That’s homework I’m sure many of us are trying to solve, and perhaps with financial rewards we can entice more people to join our movement in helping others.

Just my two cents.

Differentiating Homework

– f(David + Wen) = Co-founder

Our Baby is Legal

So as of today, the Internet is 18 years old.  Kids sure grow up fast.

I remember the days when our baby web took 5 minutes to dial up…  I remember when it got its first 56k modem and was zipping around cyberspace…  I remember when it would search for things online by guessing domain names…

Now that the web is an adult I guess it’s got a mind of its own – it can make money, instill ideas… and the best thing for us is that it can do good for the world.

“What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.”  – P.D. James, Time to Be in Earnest

I guess we did alright in giving the Internet some lovin’ :P.  Hopefully via Sola Caritas the online world can give back some of the love to the causes that matter most to us.

Nerd Cake

Happy 18th birthday!

– David, Co-Founder

Bearly 2009

Helloooo world!  We’re out of hibernation 🙂

We hope you had two great new years (Gregorian and Chinese) and that you are well on your way to not type 2008 accidentally anymore.

Over the holidays, the SC team has been working tirelessly to ramp up new designs on the website, as well as ensuring that everything works the way it’s supposed to.  For example, we now have a Neighbourhood Gossip function; it will feed to you what sorts of good stuff your neighbours on SC are up to and also what they are recommending to you!

A shout out to Motor Vortex and DreamNow for being new partners with Sola Caritas!  MV helps people search for the best prices for second hand cars and DreamNow helps bring brilliant ideas to the world.

We’ll talk again soon, no worries!  This bear is getting to work in a market that bears the same name.  Oh!  And in case you’re curious, that’s actually a good thing for us because we help companies get more bang for their hard-earned-buck-that-nobody-wants-to-spend-without-a-good-reason.

– David, Co-founder

Follow us on Twitter!  We’ll follow back to make you look popular.  We’ll also talk like a real person so it’s not boring.

 

Polar bears don't really hibernate we know... but this guy's just so cute 😛 And it reflects the weather here in Toronto...

Ru-marks

Everyone trusts their ruler… right?

For all those who may have seen us at various events, you will be familiar with the rulers that we have been giving out.  Basically, we had 30cm rulers that can break into two pieces via a puzzle-like cut down the middle.  We got people to write positive messages on one side, and on the other side, we printed facts about Canada.  The other half of the ruler was kept by whomever wrote the message.

Today, we dropped them off to be sent to Kakamega, Kenya, via one of our lovely partner charities, CESCAN.  These rulers were intended to be used by students who lacked basic stationary, even if they were lucky enough to attend school.

On a fine evening before today however, I casually glanced at one of those rulers, and noticed something amiss.  I’m not Ironman, but something just didn’t look… accurate.  A quick comparison to another ruler showed that 15cm on an SC ruler actually equates to 14.5cm on a… well… metric ruler.

After the shocks and exclamations of omg‘s, we came up with a brilliant plan to salvage our deceitful rulers.  We hole-punched them and tied a ribbon to each of the 300+ “rulers” that we received.  Voila – bookmarks with a motivating message to boot.

So for those who have received a ruler from us, use it only if you want to grow taller.  Otherwise, find comfort in knowing that 300+ messages of encouragement, laughter, joy, and love have been sent to students in Kenya who are complete strangers, but are yet linked to someone here in Canada – whatever the measured distance between them may be.

– David, Co-founder