Voluntourism

I came across the new term/concept 'voluntourism' today. I think it's pretty cool. It's not exactly a new concept, students and youths (especially) have been doing this for a long time in their gap year, career breaks etc. Perhaps the coined term is relatively new. More about voluntourism here.

Clicks here and there also brought me to the Ecoteer website, a program under a similar concept, where the tagline is 'Travel with a cause.'

Talking about gap year reminded me of my university days where some of my friends had opted for it. Gap year is when students take a year off studying in between high school and university admission, a popular practise in UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada where the trend is to participate in international education programs that combine language study, homestays, cultural immersion, community service, and independent study (quoting Wikipedia).

What do you think of gap years? Is it beneficial? Should it be an option for Malaysian students? If so, would it be a popular choice?

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An idea a day

Seth Godin mentioned Idea-A-Day website in his book Free Prize Inside I've just read last weekend. He said the lessons from the website are (and I quote the book): Firstly, stop keeping ideas a secret. Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death. The more people you share your idea with, the more likely it is to become real. Secondly, and more importantly, it's not the idea that matters, it's what you do with it. The real challenge, and the real skill comes from championing your idea, shepherding it through the system and turning it into reality.

(From here), Idea A Day is a web-based Ideas bank founded in London in August 2000 by music executive David Owen, advertising creatives Chas Bayfield and Becky Clarke, and teacher Rupert Kaye in partnership with the web development company Fortune Cookie. The web site published one original idea every day and has continued to do so ever since.

One example:
Idea #3934 Design smartphones that allow the user to gain remote access to the phone’s contents via another phone or device.

While googling for this, I came across an individual blog posting one 'fun, strategic or weird idea' a day in his blog here. This is more brand-related ideas compared to the ideaaday.org which is more broad.

One example:
Idea #559 Set up a beam-vertising Nike campaign of hidden inspirational messages on city walls that can only be revealed with long exposure pictures.

One of the reasons why I started this blog is to jot down and share my ideas, but I don't find myself doing it as often as I'd like to. I have thoughts in my head, but they don't get transferred here. Some are still there (in my head) but some are lost (forever?). I should not be too worried about proper description, or illustration, or images, or the need to google for it to see if it's already implemented, etc etc, if these things hinder me. Just a short and simple sentence would do. And the frequency of posting to this blog sooooo need improvement.

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