Just waiting to see if tomorrow 27th January 2009 brings some good news to the Po1 project. The power of one project idea was put forward for funding from Googles 10th birthday 10 to the power of 100 initiative.
Will it be shortlisted?
Posted by Jude e-learning consultant

What is 'The power of one project' ?

ok its not a small idea - and although its a simple idea its actually pretty complicated to figure out how it can work - i've got the bare bones and a bit of the flesh of it and some handle on the technology - so here it is but seriously minus any spin.

The idea is basically an online charity with a 'one to one' twist, which involves projects, givers, helpers and project posters.

Po1 projects: for example a traveler might come across an old fisherman who needs a new net costing just a small sum, or a family in need of some electrical work done on their house to make it habitable. These are small projects that real people meeting real people find out about and can action themselves.

Po1 visitors to the site are 3 kinds: those who post projects (posters) , those who want to donate to projects (givers) and those who want to help on projects (helpers), but realistically visitors can do all three.

Po1 posters: I'm expecting that many of the people posting projects will be gap year travellers. (typical users of social networking sites like facebook).

How it works:

Po1 projects get described with a mix of assets like text, photos, video etc & are linked to the member who creates them (and vice versa).

Po1 members have profiles (but not as full as in online communities) and can view/search posted projects and add to watch lists (rather like auctions) and/or rate projects and pose questions. They can donate to specific projects or to the general fund (using online pay methods such as paypal). Members can also volunteer to work on particular projects.

Po1 Vistors have a more limited info search and can only make general donations.

The Po1 member community essentially determines which projects get the funds, either by members donating to a specific project or by the voting/rating system ('would you give to this project?'/'how do you rate this project?')

Po1 revenue comes from donations to the projects or site general fund, sponsorships and advertising revenue. Money is delivered to member/projects via a sponsor (eg a business sponsor in the wire money transfer sector).

Credibility and integrity is key and the deal with members who get funds is they need to post feedback about how the project went (photos/words etc). Members who contributed or rated the project could then see this from links to projects in their watch list. In pretty much the same way that ebay members get rated/feedback, but in this case not as buyers and sellers but as posters, givers or helpers. The ratings and feedback do not prevent anyone from posting or giving but help in the way of reassurnce and/or guidance. It would be a wholly self regulating community, which would in effect be partially technology driven and partly people driven.

So summing up... Po1 is both an online charity and a global charity funding very local very personal projects which otherwise are too non specific or small to come under the umbrella of the larger charities. Plus and i think this is where its really different, its turning web 2.0 online social & collaborative networking into real world action. The bonus is that it would also be helping to redress the balance and often negative impact of travellers in localities by allowing them to put something back in.