Sunday, February 13, 2011

Rebooting Valentines Day

by Mike Kaechele


In the U.S. (everywhere?) tomorrow is commonly celebrated as Valentines Day. Not sure how an honoring of saints who were martyred got transformed into a holiday celebrating love but I'm sure that Hershey's, Hallmark, and florists were involved. Like all most holidays the emphasis is on buying something and food/candy. I am sure some economist can tell us how much Valentines Day means to the economy.


Tonight I came across another "holiday" happening tomorrow: Generosity Day. The idea comes from Sasha Dichter who is Director of Business Development at Acumen Fund, a global non-profit venture fund that invests in enterprises that fight poverty in the developing world. He spent a month being generous and saying "yes" to everyone who asked of him-beggars, email, or friends raising money. The point was made in the comments that when we are logical and try to analyze the validity or worthiness of our donation that we loose the emotional part of our brain. 


So Sasha and some other bloggers are proclaiming tomorrow Generosity Day and challenging us all to say "yes" to everyone for one day no matter what. You can participate and spread the word via blogs or Twitter with the hashtag #generosityday

I'm in. So do you want to join? We know Valentines Day will be trending tomorrow. Let's see if we can make this trend too and be generous for one day. Who knows maybe we won't want to stop.

I'm going to share this with my students tomorrow. I will invite them to participate too. How about your students?

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