Cohort 6 Talks About Making an Impact

Last Sunday, Montreal's Diller cohort 6 started to work on our Impact projects, which is a big part of what we do relating to the “Tikun Olam” (fixing the world) pillar of Diller. We started by organizing our interests visually in "mad libs" and then as a group began discussing the issues that we felt were important to us, and how we wanted to help. We examined what we thought the difficulties in achieving these goals could be and looked at how we can overcome them.

When we each had a general idea of what we wanted to do in place, we did a quick round of “Speed-Dating”, so that we could figure out whose ideas matched up the best with our own. Now we are left with the task of, within groups of 3-8, planning these Impact Projects out and making them a reality.

On the subject of the Impact Projects, Sarah told us about a charity project happening on an international scale so that we could analyze the pros and cons of certain charitable techniques. We looked at TOMS, a company that gives a free pair of shoes to those in need in third world countries for every single pair of shoes bought in stores. At first glance, this seems brilliant, but a major flaw we noticed is that they are not attacking the root of the problem. Ultimately, they cannot give everyone shoes, so this act only helps the lucky few who get shoes. We saw that the best approach is to attack the actual problem. Instead of giving some people shoes, make it safer to go barefoot such that everyone can benefit from the intervention.

Afterwards, we started planning our self-management overnight. While it is still in its early stages, our Tikun Olam themed night is taking shape to be a lot of fun. While there is still a lot of work to do, I am looking forward to the results, and to enjoying something that we put together ourselves, entirely from scratch. 
With only 3 months to Israel, all these big projects are really exciting and I am looking forward to seeing how they come out!

By Jon Boretsky