Books

Week 4

Books
January 27, 2011

Last week I was hired to shoot a corporate event for a large Bay Area organization. Held at The Mountain Winery in the hills of Saratoga, the event was certainly at a beautiful location, and would be memorable if for that reason only. What stood out to me, though, and was refreshing to witness was the choice of activity for the night. Now I'm no stranger to team-building events, having been in the corporate world for over 10 years, but this was different. The company chose Impact 4 Good, a "socially conscious corporate teambuilding company" to be the central focus of the evening. There was no falling into each others' arms, no cheesy trust exercises for these seasoned executives (who have likely done hundreds of teambuilding events over the course of their careers.) Rather, this group of VPs and up played games. Cool games like tower-building with Jenga blocks and team-scrabble. They had trivia contests and book balancing races, where teams literally balanced books on their heads in slalom-like contests against their colleagues from around the world.

  Even more impressive than the unique activities they participated in, was the purpose of the night. These teams of professional men and women competed in these games to earn building materials; materials they they would use that night to put together bookshelves. These bookshelves would hold among others, the childrens' books that these executives contributed towards the philanthropy - a local school - benefiting from all of this effort.  

To me it was an interesting choice of philanthropies, literacy. I confess, it's not one that I think about very often, and yet one that has a huge impact on an individual's life... as well as the lives of the literate surrounding them. A few statistics* to think about:

• 50 percent of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level. 
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• 20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level. 
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• 3 out of 4 people on welfare can't read.
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• 20 percent of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage. 
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• 3 out of 5 people in an American prison can't read.
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• 85 percent of juvenile offenders have problems reading. 
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• Illiteracy has been proven to cause children to drop out of school. Dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues.  

*taken from Education-Portal.com


There are many worthy charities, and this isn't an endorsement of one over the other, but rather a positive statement about the impact individuals and organizations can have on their neighbors, on their local communities, and worldwide. This organization and these individuals chose to build needed bookshelves and contribute books to a local school, and I think that's pretty cool.

 

image taken with Canon 5DMII, 50mm 1.8 lens, 1/40 sec @ f1.8, ISO 640