In a crowded elevator or other places where we’re closely surrounded by others, it seems that people talk to strangers less, not more.

When I moved to Vancouver from Toronto, some years back, I was puzzled to find it to be a less friendly city.    Logically, I would have thought the opposite to be true.   The more crowded together people are, I would have thought the more they might need to create the kind of mental distance from others that they lack in physical distance.   So small towns are friendlier; huge cities less so.  This is a huge generalization of course in that some cultures are friendlier regardless of the size of the cities.

I’ve met one or two people who disagree, who find Vancouver friendlier than Toronto, but for the most part I’ve found that people agree that Torontonians are friendlier.   Some have chosen to move back to Toronto, even referring to Vancouver as ‘clique-ish’, and that it’s hard to meet people.  When I first moved here, I figured the distance or disconnect was because the city was made up of so many people who were new.   There were large number of immigrants arriving then particularly from Hong Kong, and in the number of people arriving in BC from other provinces in a single year was said to be equivalent to the population of Prince Edward Island.    But I don’t think transience is a reason any more.

Random conversation with strangers – waiting at a crosswalk, for example, or for an elevator – in general is not responded to as positively here on the coast.  That’s been my experience, anyway.  So if density doesn’t explain it, I used to wonder if it could have to do with the absence of climate extremes.   In winter in Ontario, I think many people have had an experience of getting stuck in snow, or sliding into a ditch, or having to pull over because you can’t see a damn thing through a blizzard.   I was always amazed by how quickly strangers always appeared to help, to push, or with shovels, or to check if you needed help at the side of the road, in whatever number was needed.  Temperatures were low enough that people could get into trouble pretty quickly, so there was a collective responsibility that wasn’t spoken, but was understood.   And that created a sort of camaraderie.

In the Outback in Australia, I noticed a similar thing.   When temperatures were over 40 celsius and the red landscape stretched flat out to the horizon in all directions with only the road bisecting it, if you stopped by the side of the road, the first car to come by stopped and checked if you had water.    When the climate could be more of a danger, people looked out for strangers.

So I used to wonder if that might be why.   In Vancouver, unless you’re a backcountry skier or boater, we usually don’t need that gear, that slight radar of responsibility, of checking to make sure that strangers aren’t in danger, or don’t need help.  There’s a sort of bonding that happens out of that collective responsibility, that we Vancouverites might miss.

Here in Vancouver, our climate is temperate rainforest.  But we’re in the midst of winter wonderland, the palm trees covered in snow.

Midday today in Vancouver at Burrard and Davie, the light turned green and the woman in the wheelchair tried to get through the snow so she could get from the sidewalk to the crosswalk.   Davie’s a pretty major street, but it sure looked like it hadn’t seen a snowplow yet.  I asked if she’d like a push, and when I couldn’t even get the wheelchair to move, asked another guy to help.  Within about 30 seconds there must have been ten people helping to get her over the snowbank to cross the street.  Then there was a sort of smiling, chattering connection with people, the kind that doesn’t happen as a regular thing between strangers in Vancouver.

I recognize that my ‘why Vancouver isn’t friendlier’ theory has one major flaw, because it would follow that citizens in warmer places like, say, California are the least friendly of all.  Which isn’t really so.

And I’m not saying I’m all for climate change because the extremes will make us all care for one another more.

But I wonder if taking a risk at least once a day to create conversation with a stranger, just a moment of connection, might make us all look out for one another a little bit more.

A few days ago I noticed this interesting new video ‘You Are Powerful‘ from Amnesty International, driven by a message that every individual can affect human rights change. The video shows multiple scenes of human rights abuse, some of them with individuals who stepped in to stop the abuse.   After each of these quick scnes, those same individuals are then seen in a peaceful environment, facing the camera and looking serious and proud.

I think the ad is effective, but I’m sorry that there isn’t an opportunity to learn more. Were the incidents real, or are the individuals and their acts supposed to be representative of people who do stand up for human rights? If they are real, I want an opportunity to read or hear more about their stories. Where was the incident? Why were they there? How were they able to get past the fear for their own personal safety, in the action that they took? What were the repercussions for doing what they did? How can they safely go public with these stories? How do they feel now about their actions, looking back?  What’s the story about how the video came to be?  How did they find the people who risked their lives doing these things, often in such mayhem?

Couldn’t find answers with a quick search on Amnesty International’s main site.

I think it’s a strong, effective ad, but also that they’re missing out on an opportunity to engage citizens and potential advocates at the moment they’re most interested.

Anything that occurs at an intersection between Skoll Foundation and Kiva is likely to be worth checking out.

So I’m recommending this as a well-spent few minutes for social entrepreneurs:   a video clip of an interview with Kiva’s Primal Shah.

Covered much better in his video, but a few highlights:

- Blog it, show your progress, and include your struggles and constraints.   Letting your constraints be known to the public can lead to people stepping up and helping out:  it did for Kiva.

- Build an advisory board – experts who get credit online.  Their expertise make you look credible, and their networks build leverage.  People feel that they are co-creating something important.

- Less planning and projecting, more starting – on whatever scale – in an idea you believe in.  Don’t ask for permission.

Elsewhere on Skoll, John Wood of Room to Read said something similar – his advice in response to one of the common themes he hears from people who want to follow their passion … stop asking for permission.

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Primal Shah left his job at PayPal to co-build Kiva MicroFunds, an organization providing microfinance in poor countries, allowing people to help themselves

John Wood left his executive role at Microsoft to start Room to Read, partner with local communities throughout the developing world to provide education via libraries, local language kids books, new schools, computer labs, and education for girls.

Skoll Foundation supports social entrepreneurship, giving over $ 30 million USD/yr. in grants.

Jeff Skoll was the first eBay President, championed the eBay Foundation, and is the CEO of the intriguing and gutsy Participant Productions that funds big-name, Oscar-level Hollywood films that promote social values.   He also funded the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, at Oxford University.

I’m beginning to see that two separate topics that have been on my mind can be – perhaps need to be – linked.

Both are about videos:

• The ‘jaw-dropping’ testimonies of cancer patients in Ontario, Canada who have been denied funding for their cancer treatments.
• The other, university professor Randy Pausch’s ‘last lecture’, which over the past week+ has had such a huge public response. It is the story of a man who desperately wants to see his kids grow up, but now knows that will not be possible. All three kids are under six, and they are why, at the end of his university talk to a full lecture hall, he told the assembled students and faculty that the talk they had heard was not for them.

Last year, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation invited viewers to give their opinions on who is (or was – they can be dead) the greatest Canadian to date. Canadians finally decided on Tommy Douglas, who shifted Canada to universal health care. That Canadians held his initiative so incredibly important is why I’m surprised at the lack of outcry about the inequal and often inadequate health care treatment from province to province. I’m amazed that there aren’t more comments on this video, or more links to it from other sites.

Jumping back to Randy Pausch – one of the memorable things he discussed was the purpose served by brick walls. The brick wall is important, he said, because its existence (and our frustrations at how impassable it seems to be) lets us know how badly we want something. I love how this statement re-frames my perception of insurmountable obstacles.

It seems to me that we need to figure out how to bring that re-framing to activate more Canadians into moving toward that brick wall. We need a surge of civil society committed to removing the bricks.

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