Idea Day20: To Save Life, Don’t Spam.
2 minutes before, MSN Messenger notified me an incoming email from my friend. It’s a spam-like emergent call. I’m not surprised since she used to forward mails regarding search for somebody/something with certain attributions to save someone’s life, such as “Please send this email to your friends, this boy needs sources of bone marrow transplanting (type AB)!”, or “Car accident witnesses wanted!” Normally, I will delete those mails immediately without a glance, but this time somehow I opened this mail, and go through the entail article. Ya, this sort of mails are troublesome in the way of dissemination, but once you spend few seconds glancing over, you’ll usually find an emotional story inside, a really sad story, which very likely invokes your sympathy (to click the “forward” button). My sympathy was invoked and so did an idea that helps make those life-saving mails more effective and less intrusive .
a.) A center aggregates mails/messages of emergent calls with better categorization and search engine -> find out “what I can help” more easily from those categories.
b.) A database composed of volunteers’ blood type, weight, age, physical condition, etc, and their preferred categories of donation/contribution.
c.) Volunteers can subscribe categories they want to offer help.
d.) To increase the accuracy of matching, tags, maps related API can be utilized.
e.) Sending texts/pics through cellphone, if this case is urgent.
f.) Track recovering progress of someone you have helped/cared; build relationship among those offering help and receiving help.
For example, one case in which a poor girl with leukemia get lots of attention/care, that is, many volunteers subscribe the newest update of her condition (someone, maybe her family or her friends, need to update her current situation.) Here, the relationship is created. However, another boy suffered from cancer in the bones may not as fortunate as her. He receive less or no attention. In this case, someone can help “promote” his story to the front page or top headlines. (dig? comment buzz? broadcast in the category of bone cancer?)
Non-profit again, life is priceless after all.
Sphere It
