You may have heard the story of how on May 3, 2008, 40,000 volunteers picked up all the trash in the country of Estonia. Since then, similar “Let’s Do It” actions have been organized from Bangalore to New Dehli.
In the U.S., there’s been a lot of action around technology and government, and conferences with tag lines like, “Private Sector Solutions Meet Government Challenges.” Two major points of energy in what’s called the Gov 2.0 or Open Government movement have been transparency, pushed by organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, and the “open data” movement, harnessing governments’ propensity for statistics to create handy mobile programs for organizing and accessing useful information on parking, recycling, available taxis and neighborhood crime data.
But I’ve always seen Gov 2.0’s greatest potential as unleashing projects like Let’s Do It, harnessing collective energy and talent to overcome big civic challenges. Could San Francisco create a Let’s Do It project to collectively map all of the dumping and graffiti in the city and take it on in a massive day of volunteer action involving muralists, City workers, business sponsors, neighbors and volunteers from around the Bay?
I think so.
I believe it could happen. When I was 22 I went to New York City for the first time in my life. There was trash everywhere. But, being the country girl I was, I could not figure out why all those thousands of people in NY would not just bend over and pick up two pieces of trash. What would be so hard to do that everyday? Being the naive person I still am, I still can’t figure out why people do not pick up at least two pieces of trash daily (one for the piece you may have dropped, and one for someone else). Anyway, it can be done, as long as people see how easy it can happen. It would be so simple. Just volunteer, and do your own part. The rest will fall into place.