This is a short tale of how one good thing can hopefully lead to another. And another, and another again.

It starts with Neil Perkin at Only Dead Fish who today announced that he’s heading to Tanzania in Africa for the first time in November with the The Great Football Giveaway – a charity that aims to get sports equipment direct into the hands (or feet) of some of the world’s most disadvantaged kids.

In a nutshell, Neil is getting a team or two together to give footballs to kids who don’t have very much at all. Just watch the film, and you’ll see the power it can have on these kids – it’s amazing, inspirational stuff.

We wrote a post earlier this year on how the World Cup wasn’t doing much for the continent that hosted it. I was born in Africa, and lived there as a kid, and was really frustrated that marketeers amongst others weren’t seeing the bigger picture. So this got us really excited – here’s a way to do something about it. Right now.

We want to do our bit to help Neil on his mission. And to hopefully give someone else a chance to go and experience the joy, energy and optimism that sits alongside the poverty, illness, war, famine and depressing lack of opportunities. In short to experience something completely different.

We need to iron out details with Neil but the idea is to get a conversation going that finds someone who’s never been to Africa and then backs them to get out there in November as part of the team.

Maybe someone who’s recently graduated and can’t get work or someone who’s out of work right now but would be really excited and motivated to be on the team.

We’ll chuck £500 in to get them flights. We don’t want anything in return other than for them to create some kind of record about their trip – to capture a sense of what these kids lives consist of, the highs and the lows and bring to life the impact of the charity.

So, there’s the next step in the chain. A big part of the Pipeline Project is about backing people to do new things that have a positive social impact. So watch this space for more news and details on how it’s going to work. And if you want to get involved either to head out there, or as part of the team backing them up at this end, just let us know.

Jambo bwana

So much of this struck a chord with us, and makes total sense. Indeed, it is the surprising truth about what motivates us, but is it that surprising?

Watch it, and see what you think.

The story, the science and the way its presented feels intuitively right and almost freakishly mirrors a lot of what we’ve been discussing at Pipeline about how we build our business to be relevant and resilient.

The idea that we’re motivated by being self-directed, masters of what we do and behind a bigger mission or purpose is bang on. The only thing I’d add is that we’re motivated to be helpful to other people, and that relationships count for something way beyond and deeper than any monetary exchange.

Wish we’d gone to the talk, Dan Pink is amazingly talented and inspirational.

We’ll be putting the ’1 day ideas’ challenge to the test later this year for a charity/cause who don’t normally get that kind of thinking and input on getting solutions to their problems. Think Apprentice challenge, meets Hack Day meets Nightclub meets 24 hr Pizza Party.

If you know any people working at really worthwhile causes or charities you think could do with some help, let us know

Likewise, if you’d like to get involved in bringing your skills into play drop us a line as we gather a gang together to do this. Whether you are a craftsman, designer, researcher, strategist, developer, digital ninja or whatever it is you do, the more the merrier…..