Via Rob Cottingham of the Social Signal blog and Darren Barefoot, a Vancouver-based company called GiveMeaning is taking the old Unicef coin-collecting box concept to the next level.

This is cool for so many reasons; you can trace the donated money from the source right to how the charity spends it, and the “moderator” of the process is a small child; old enough to know how to operate an online blog, and to learn the importance of donating to charity:

Each BankBox has a unique serial number. At a secure  web site, children enter their box’s serial number and a password they’ve been assigned. Each child chooses a cartoon avatar and gets her or his own web page (GiveMeaning wants to protect children’s privacy, so photos aren’t used and pages are reviewed by the organization before they go live). The child chooses any charity to receive the money they’ve raised, and reports on how much they raise.

Cooler yet, each box comes with tear-off cards that kids can give to every neighbour who makes a donation. The cards also have the serial number printed on them, so donors can see the child’s web page and where their money went – and have a chance to donate again.

Once GiveMeaning collects the money and disburses it to charities, the recipients are encouraged to post a letter on the child’s web page explaining how they used the money.

Add this to the number of reasons why I miss trick-or-treating. There might even still be time to sign up, kids. More info on the project (still in its ‘pilot’ stage) here.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 29th, 2006 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.