Dan and Jared Austin - 88 Bikes - donating bicycles to a local orphanage in Cambodia
Last updated 28/06/2009 18:40:46
A little over a year ago, NY-based film maker Dan Austin decided to join his brother on a trip to Cambodia. Jared Austin is a young pediatrician in Minneapolis who wanted to volunteer for 2 weeks at a children's hospital in Pnom Phen.
Both being total bicycle freaks (Dan's 1998 movie "True Fans" about their bike trip across America won awards and accolades on festivals around the world) they decided bike through the Cambodian country side and at the end donate their bicycles to a local orphanage ... or so they thought!
After finding the address of an orphanage close to their location, they also learned that it housed 88 orphans, not 2, and the question quickly arose, what to do about the remaining 86 kids. With a little more than a week to go, Dan teamed up with his friend Nick Arauz who set up an internet site called 88bikes.com, linked it up to Paypal, installed a Blog service, they formed a non-for-profit organization so donations could be tax deductible and went online.
Having bought the first 3 bikes themselves, they simply invited friends and family to donate the tax deductible amount of $88 which would buy a bicycle plus helmet and lock for one orphan at the Palm Tree Center in Cambodia.
In addition, and this was a huge added incentive, they encouraged donors to e-mail a picture of themselves which would be printed out and given to the child together with the bicycle. In return, Dan and Jared would take pictures of each child with their bicycle holding their donor's picture in their hands. They called it "granular philanthropy" directly connecting one donor and the receiving child, one by one.