Meekrats, Legos and Money (or, I Still Don’t Know What You Do)

Many people have asked me lately “so what do you do?” or “what are you doing now?” having passed the Bar Exam.  That’s a complicated answer with a bunch of pieces, but I can tell you about one part of what I do now.  So I’ll tell you, and then I’ll ask for your money.

I’m continuing my work with Creative Commons, or CC as we call it for short. – oh, great, you’re thinking,   I never understood that anyway.  Well hold on, I’ll try to explain, again. 

CC has these nifty tools that help people share.  You remember kindergarten, right?  That lovely time when you could eat paste and pick your nose and the only thing you had to do to succeed was know how to share.  Well, we help adults reconnect with their inner child and share nicely.  And, since sharing is so wonderful, we work to help the whole world share, too.

Enter our teams and our CC communities around the world.  They are people who like to share and they want to spread the word about sharing, too.  They teach other people about sharing and they teach them how to use the CC tools. 

It’s kind of like when you had the Legos and some other kind wanted to play with them and you showed the other kid how you could both play with them together and then you and the other kid became great friends and made really cool castles with moats and all sorts of things you never would have thought of on your own.

One of the things I do at Creative Commons is work with some of those teams that teach others about sharing, specifically our teams in Sub Saharan Africa.  The teams are working to build sharing communities in their areas.  I help them coordinate with our big top-man office in the City and to connect with other teams for joint problem solving and solution sharing.  It’s super fun and I even get to use my Tonga!

All these teams and communities are made up of volunteers.  They give a lot of time and energy to spreading sharing.  Sometimes, they even give their money because there’s no other money for them to get.

Generally, international grants funded by private organizations and NGOs are HUGE, we’re talking T-Rex huge, multi-million dollars.  Our teams and communities don’t need or want that kind of money.  They just want a couple hundred bucks to do some nifty projects and sessions about sharing.

So, CC has created this neat new program that will allow the teams and communities to apply for little grants, meekrat sized grants, instead of T-Rex ones. 

And all this month, CC is raising money for this program.  (This is where I ask you for money, if you haven’t figured that out yet.)  You can help! Yes, you.  There’s a pretty green box on the top left of my blog.  See that box that says “contribute”?  Click it.  Click it, I say.  Then you can sleep easier at night knowing you’ve made a real difference in the world, instead of sending a T-shirt to Africa ;)  Oh, and you can even get your own t-shirt.

 

“Meekrat” cc-by Brokinhrt2, available on Flickr

“Daddy’s old stash of Legos” cc-by-sa Big Ben, available on Picasa