A Gangster’s Story (I)
It may surprise you, but I am a Gangster.
It’s the truth: I am part of a well organised Gang. Together we have successfully done a lot of Hold-ups around the world.
But, we never hurt anyone and never stole someone’s money…
So what do we do?
This article is an invitation to dive into MakeSense universe and discover, through my personal story, a range of actions a modern Gangster can do!
Part 1: Paris to Manila
June 2012.
Paris. At the occasion of an event on travel and social change, I met a funny guy with long black hair. He was distributing stickers to almost everyone in the room, talking with enthusiasm about a startup he founded a year earlier: “MakeSense”.
His name was Christian. He explained to me that he wanted to connect social entrepreneurs with volunteers willing to give time and creativity, to help them to solve their challenges. Inspired by his own trip to Asia, he has the ambition to build a global community and to boost social business all around the world.
Crazy guy.
Super crazy stickers.
September 2013.
My second encounter with MakeSense happened when I came to participate in a SenseCamp.
A SenseCamp is a 2-day unconference dedicated to innovation and social entrepreneurship, hosted by MakeSense community.
It was really different from all the events I had attended before!
On a sunny weekend, about 200 people from various backgrounds, ages, personalities and skillsets, gathered in Paris to interact, reflect and work together on how to address the most pressing challenges of society.
The agenda was made of talks, workshops, exchanges, movement, music, and so on. Half of the program was set in advance, and the other half was in a form of a barcamp: open for new ideas and spontaneous meetings on topics brought in the room by participants themselves.
These intense two days were a great opportunity for me to meet awesome people: project holders, travellers, artists, activists… as well as inspiring social innovation “celebrities” such as Navi Radjou, author of a book on frugal innovation (Jugaad Innovation), and Tony Meloto, Founder of Gawad Kalinga, a Philippine-based movement that aims at ending poverty by restoring the dignity of the poor.
That’s also during this SenseCamp that I discovered interesting initiatives like Disco Soup (collective and open sessions when rejected or unsold fruits and vegetables are cooked in a musical and festive atmosphere), and many more.
Being surrounded by like-minded people, having meaningful conversations and working collectively on positive projects gave me so much energy!
And that was not all!
During this weekend I attended my first Hold-up.
A Hold-up is a 2-hour creativity workshop where people give ideas and imagine concrete solutions to a specific challenge a social entrepreneur is facing in the development of his/her project.
Why “Hold-up”? Simply because it is all about stealing creative ideas in the brain of the participants. No money involved, no violence either! ☺️
Reassured?
I came out of these 2 days with a big smile and energized. Feeling really connected with the community, I absolutely wanted to stay in touch and contribute more.
So what?
I joined the Gang. I became a Gangster…
Gangsters are volunteer members in the MakeSense ecosystem; they are so called because they regularly organize Hold-ups to help social entrepreneurs.
October 2013.
It happened that I joined MakeSense at the same time as I left Paris for a big trip around the world.
I first went to South-East Asia. It’s in the Philippines, a few months later, that my action as a Gangster became concrete.
January 2014.
I arrived in the Philippines at the very beginning of 2014. There, I met Bruno, another French Gangster who was on a world tour about sustainable food.
Together we hosted several SenseDrinks in Manila and in Boracay.
A SenseDrink is an informal meeting for social entrepreneurship enthusiasts, organized by one or several members of MakeSense community.
Then I headed to the Center for Social Innovation of Gawad Kalinga, based at the Enchanted Farm, in Angat (Bulacan), in the North of Manila.
Discovering this place, the projects and the social business ecosystem was actually the main reason why I came to the Philippines. So I stayed at the Farm as a volunteer for 2 weeks.
Every year, at the end of January, Gangsters usually celebrate MakeSense’s anniversary (founded January 2011) by organizing Hold-ups in lots of countries on the same day.
Being at the Center for Social Innovation at the moment of the Worldwide Hold-up Day happened to be a beautiful opportunity for me to join the global event and facilitate my first Hold-up!
With Julie, another Gangster present at the Farm, we decided to take up the challenge and co-organize a hold-up for the entrepreneur she was working for. His challenge was designing a crowdfunding campaign.
I must admit that at the beginning I wasn’t feeling very confident about the workshop: it was not in my country and culture, it was not in my mother language, I was new in MakeSense and my experience in communication and crowdfunding was close to zero.
But what I was sure of, is that I wanted to help!
And the great thing is: within MakeSense, you are never alone.
There are community developers who are there to help you, as well as a range of manuals aimed at helping the preparation of Hold-ups through relevant questions and topics to be addressed.
And so we did it!
Collectively we came up with a lot of interesting ideas and solutions.
Most of the ideas were implemented a few weeks after. At the end of the campaign, the entrepreneur has raised more than $9000!
At that moment I realized the impact it is possible to achieve simply by gathering people and using collective intelligence.
I also realized that I didn’t need to be an expert in social entrepreneurial challenges to be able to help. So what I did, you can do too!
The full-time team at MakeSense regularly organizes trainings about the Hold-up methodology as well as hangouts so that Gangsters can share feedbacks and experiences and help each other. As the community grows, there is more and more knowledge and more and more manuals to provide the right support on specific questions.
February 2014.
Before the Hold-up, during my first months in the Gang, I hadn’t dare to launch something by myself.
After my experience in the Philippines, I felt I could do more and thus decided to organize a SenseDrink in my next destination: Taiwan.
Again, this SenseDrink in Taipei was a great way to connect with people who share the same values. The power of MakeSense is that you can find these people relatively easily, even in a country you have never been to, thanks to the interconnections of the members.
September 2014.
After 10 months of travelling in Asia and then in the Pacific Area, I was back in Europe for a couple of months.
With the wish to stay active and keep the connection with MakeSense, I went to the SenseSpace (MakeSense office in Paris), attended a few meetups and Hold-ups as a participant.
I also volunteered for 3 days with the Social Media Squad at the occasion of Convergences World Forum. With other Gangsters, our role was to pass on the information and discussions of the Forum through social media.
(that’s what made me open my Twitter account!)
Besides, I offered my help and thus got involved, during the Forum, in the co-facilitation of another Hold-up, for a startup who wanted to design an application to enable citizens to spot the more responsible places and products in their neighbourhood.
October 2014 to May 2015.
I left Europe to travel again, this time in South America.
Like in Asia and in New Zealand the year before, I had the chance to easily connect with people involved in social and/or environmental initiatives in the countries visited (especially Brazil, Bolivia and Peru). I even attended a Hold-up in Portuguese at Yunus Negocios Sociais in São Paulo.
I didn’t organize events during these months, however I kept actively interacting with the global community, online.
MakeSense is an open project and an open community. It not only means that it’s free to join, but also that as a Gangster you contribute according to the time you have and to the level of engagement you can.
Guess what?
In addition to Hold-ups, there are many ways you can be involved!
Discover these actions with the continuation of the story in the second part of this article: A Gangster’s Story (II)- Nairobi to Berlin.
