Warsaw Fellowship 2016

Feeding the Internet  

Tadeusz Michrowski, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

Alex Granato, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, USA

Aleksander Bucholski, 2016 Ideas Incubator Fellow, Poland

There is a fanpage on Facebook that has twelve thousands followers, each of its posts is getting over five hundred fans. People share its content and talk about it. This page is making a real difference in Polish internet. It’s not our page. It’s ‘Stories from Tinder’ page and it gathers the stupidestdescriptions of people who at some point of their existencelooked in the mirror and decided that sharing with strangers information about how they like anal sex would be a game changer in their romantic life. We madea page about feeding the most vulnerable. We have 76 likes. That puts things in a proper perspective.

*** Before I had a group and a cause, I had to ask myself few questions. ‘Whom I want to help’, was one of them. Somehow it felt like asking something else: ‘Whom I don’t want to help’. And why. I may be afraid to stand up for some causes, I may be unsure to fight for others, I may just not understand something enough, to advocate for it. I may this or that but in the end, how much I don’t like to constantly question myself*, I have to do something and, hopefully, believe I’m right. My team was lucky. Alex, Aleks** and Tadeusz (who is me) were designated to work with underprivileged groups. That is probably one of the broadest of all terms used by HIA. The choice we made was an easy one: working with Food Banks for the benefit of hungry people. Nobody will hate us for focusing on little, cute girls;shiny smiles coming from most obscure part of the city may create only positive emotions. “Cuteness factor”,as said by one of the HIA speakers. But it doesn’t mean it was a walk in the park. “We need no food” said people from our cooperating organization. “Those children are not starving. We need money to pay our staff.” We started having some ideas about the issues. Then we realized we have no idea about them at all and – finally – confronted the simple fact: what people need is important but what is more important is what we can give them. So, we decided on a matter, on a message, on a target-group and we had a good idea. Lovely Alex&Alekspart of the team came up with it. I’ll limit my role to givingyou an opportunity to see how hard it was to make it “sexy”. The internet loves short messages. It loves images, gif’s and – above all – it loves videos. As for the content, anybody who has ever seen any of HBO-produced series knows what “sells” stuff to people. Sex and violence. Recently: also dragons. It’s hard to compete with that. Unless... you use porn. Food porn in this particular situation. We decided to take the social media fashion of posting photos of food and show people how ironic word “sharing” is in this particular situation. We went to our local cooperating organization and convinced few parents to let us take photos of kids trying to eat actual photos of internet food. And now? We are establishing cooperation with Polish network of Food Banks and we target top online grocery stores. 

Imagine. You go to your favorite online grocery shop, you buy your little octopuses and caviar, and Italian wine*** and whatever else will make a cool Facebook post after youput it through a thousand iPhone camera filters and, while you are close to check out, you notice OUR OPTION. A cool, simple yet elegant way of buying an extra basket of food for little, sweet, hungry kids. And the best is that this option allows you to post marvelous pictures of food that would be actually made out of ingredients in the basket.
You can share food with real people, while sharing food-photos with friends. Can you feel the hipster-ish, moral high ground up there? By the way: as I’m finishing writing this paragraph, we are having around 150 likes. We are on you, ‘Stories from Tinder’!

 The real work is probably finished, yet at the same time the real work is yet to come. We will have to make sure that all the people in suits and ties and ironed shirts will meet at some point in one room and it’s our responsibility that before they leave, their hearts will be sold on our idea. It will take a lot of phones and e-mails. Maybe even ironing our own shirts. We will try to make sure that negotiations between Food Banks and shops will not flush our idea. We will look for food bloggers and journalists for publicity. I hope we will. What is finished is the work with ones it is all about. Social workers, kids. Guys, who are not waiting for somebody to save them. They are totally self-reliant, intelligent and witty, they are not miserable but could use some help. It was probably the best part of work.

Whoever says that volunteering is about giving has no idea what he is talking about. You soon realize you get from the people you are’ helping’ way more than you could ever give them. And they probably think it’s them who are on the better part of a deal. Here comes the magic. Both sides are sharing things that has no particular value to them, like time, and both get something priceless in the exchange. Inspiration, simple wisdom, emotions they could never got in their own environment. It can change the way you see the world.

I wonder about things. When we’ve left Aim High Association for the last time, Aleks said he will miss the kids, we were working with. I won’t. The very second I passed heavy metal doors, I knew we were as much guests in their lives as they were in ours. The thing I wonder about is “humanity” in HIA’s name. It is probably more effective not to get attached. But it seems more human to do so.

Alex Granato
Aleksander Bucholski
Tadeusz Michrowski

 *The only reason I don’t suspect myself of being schizophrenic is the fact I can’t tickle myself.
**Such a delight to have two teammates with similar name. Whenever you ask one a question, you get response from two sources.
***By now you know who our target is.