Random acts of kindness

I have never met Leng Sopharat. Until three weeks ago, I hadn't even heard about her. Nevertheless, I'm helping to send her to college.

Here's what happened: One afternoon, Beth Kanter blogs that she has just added Shirley Williams to her top friends in Facebook. The reason: She was the first to donate to Beth's fundraising campaign to send Leng - an orphan from Cambodia - to college. In the same post, Beth promises that she will acknowledge the first thirty donors in Facebook and on her blog. I am enticed, and a few clicks later I've left a couple of Dollars at PayPal to support the campaign. It doesn't take fifteen minutes, and Beth adds me as a friend on Facebook. Half an hour later, a blogpost appears: I was number four to contribute.

Of course, the story isn't over yet: Beth raises the 1.000$ needed to fund Leng Sopharat's college year within 24 hours, only through online social media (Blogging, Twitter, Facebook). She then extends the campaign to send a second student - Chanphearom - to college, too. Eighty individual donations helped to reach this second goal as well - after ten more days.

Thank you, Beth, for starting this wonderful fundraising experiment. It was an honour to contribute.

And next time someone tells me that social media doesn't have any impact in the real world, I can tell the story of how Facebook and Twitter send two young orphans to college.