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Youth Today——Speak, Act,Change!
我们青年有力量
至今依然记得2009年冬天的某个晚上，我和Lavender一起跟随美国可持续发展社区协会（Institute for Sustainable Communities，简称ISC，美国的一个NGO组织）广州分部的三位负责人以及一些来自广东各高校的学生志愿者们一起前往广东省珠海市斗门镇南门小学，参加由该组织策划的一场“亲子环保游园会”。在游园会的“环保飞行棋”活动中，我看到了难忘的一幕：因为人多，队伍有点混乱，其中一位家长性子比较急想插队，但他的孩子则坚持按先后顺序排队并组织大家有序地开展活动，他的爸爸一开始很不悦，后来则开心地帮着孩子一起维持现场秩序……这只是生活中的一个小片段，却让我看到了一种力量——青少年的影响力！
正如梁启超那篇脍炙人口的散文《少年中国说》中所言：“少年智则国智，少年富则国富，少年强则国强，少年独立则国独立，少年自由则国自由，少年进步则国进步。”青少年的影响力绝对不容忽视！本期我们就来聚焦青少年的力量，看看朝气蓬勃、意气风发的他们如何“指点江山，挥斥方遒”，如何化“点子”为行动，进而梦想成真！
——Maisie
Today’s internet-3)savvy students are starting their own businesses and 4)forging their own path in life…and here are two prime examples:
Edwin Broni-Mensah, 25: Creator of GiveMeTap
Edwin Broni-Mensah, you could argue, is an 5)academic or a 6)philanthropist whose scheme is either 7)naively idealistic or brilliant or both. Either way, as soon as you’ve read about his idea, you’ll be 8)kicking yourself for not having thought of it. We’re sitting beside 9)the Serpentine on an unusually warm winter morning in London’s 10)Hyde Park. Broni-Mensah is patiently 11)expounding the perils of toxic 12)BPA plastic bottles. 13)Phasing out these hateful bottles is the aim of his project, now in its second year.
It was through playing 14)squash at university that Broni-Mensah came up with GiveMeTap. Throughout his PhD, sport was his 15)sanctuary, yet something didn’t 16)add up: “Tap water is free and portable yet I was spending a 17)fiver a day on bottled water. I was like, ‘Why?’”
The concept of GiveMeTap was born, launched online for a song, and last year won him an award as “most outstanding black student in Britain”. It works like this: you buy a tidy blue bottle made from recycled aluminium for £7 from his website and take it into any cafe which has signed up as a “provider” of the scheme. Your bottle is then filled with tap water for free, thus reducing the wastage in 18)landfill sites, helping communities in Africa install clean water pumps (70% of the £7 goes towards this) and saving your money.
Although the scheme currently operates solely in the 19)Manchester area, Broni-Mensah has moved in with his parents in London, in order to launch it in London, it’s hoped, in time for the Olympics. In theory, he’ll be providing 1 million people with access to clean water by 2013.
All very 20)benevolent but still, given the current climate, it seems 21)bonkers to invest seven years of education into a non-profit scheme, 22)subsidizing your rent by tutoring maths when you could be 23)making a packet in the City. “I know,” he laughs. “All my friends are bankers and I’m their poor student mate. But it’s my choice.” And, frankly, there are enough bankers to go round, allowing people like Dr. Broni-Mensah to turn 24)staggeringly obvious ideas into life-changing schemes.
Poppy Dinsey, 23: Fashion blogger
It is 10 am on the first day of 25)London fashion week and Poppy Dinsey has already been photographed four times. “I think it’s the coat,” she says as yet another blogging 26)fashionista takes a 27)snap of her 28)canary yellow 29)Burberry 30)mackintosh. “I am a walking 31)highlighter, essentially.”
The coat is just one example of Dinsey’s 32)uncanny ability to 33)channel the latest 34)sartorial trends 35)with 36)consummate ease. Last year, she turned this talent into a thriving business by launching What I Wore Today (wiwt.com), a blog that does exactly what it says on the tin by uploading photographs of Dinsey’s chosen outfit on a regular basis, accompanied by her commentary (a 37)jumper featuring an 38)appliqué39)reindeer is deemed: “Well Christmassy.”). The website has details of where to buy the clothes, and for each sale directed through wiwt.com, Dinsey gets a40)percentage.
“I started the site as a new year’s resolution,” she says, sipping a coffee outside Somerset House in London. “I was already posting what I wore on Twitter. I had 2,500 followers before I launched the site and I thought I’d try it for a year to see what happened. It wasn’t a pain to do. I mean, I’m getting dressed every day anyway.”
But Dinsey has turned getting dressed into a successful business model: there are now plans to expand the site into a social network where anyone can upload their daily outfits and where there will be competitions in different parts of the country where users can vote for “the most fashionable” in 41)Leeds, Manchester or other cities. Again, any sale made through the website will be 42)monetized through affiliate deals. 43)Vodafone was so impressed by Dinsey that it recruited her to be an official blogger at London fashion week.
“The site kind of supports itself but I’m here being paid by Vodafone and that sponsorship is what keeps me 44)afloat,” she says. “The biggest 45)outlay was £4,000 to buy the 46)domain name because I realized if I was trying to build a global brand, it wasn’t going to work without the dotcom.”
It is, perhaps, a curious career for a woman who graduated from 47)UCL in economics, business and East European studies in 2008, but Dinsey insists she never liked the traditional office environment. After graduating, she worked for two web start-up companies specializing in property searches—“If I worked hard on something and it didn’t get used, I’d be furious. And I got really sick of working with estate agents.” Instead, she moved back in with her parents, and set up What I Wore Today. And does she already know what she will be wearing tomorrow? “Oh yeah. I’ve got it all written down and planned for the week ahead.” She laughs. “I’ve turned my 48)OCD into a business.”
今天，深谙互联网技术的学生们正在创立属于他们自己的事业，开创自己的人生之路……这里就有两个极好的榜样：
埃德温·布罗尼—门萨（25岁）：GiveMeTap网站创始人
你可以说埃德温·布罗尼—门萨是一名学究，或是一名慈善家，至于他提出的计划，你也许会觉得天真又充满理想主义色彩，也许会觉得精妙绝伦，又或许是两者兼而有之。无论如何，一旦听说了他的想法，你大概会严厉自责：“我为什么就没有想到呢？”在一个少有的温暖冬日上午，我们坐在伦敦海德公园的九曲湖边。布罗尼—门萨正在耐心而详细地解释有毒双酚A塑料瓶的危害。他正在进行的计划旨在逐渐淘汰这些可恶的瓶子，目前这个计划已经进入第二年。
在大学时，布罗尼—门萨热爱打壁球，正是这段经历让他萌生了创建网站GiveMeTap（给我自来水）的想法。读博期间，运动一直是他的“避难所”，但是他总觉得有什么地方不合理：“自来水是免费的，而且可以携带，但我却每天花五英磅购买瓶装水。我就想，‘为什么呢？’”
GiveMeTap的想法就此诞生，并通过一首广告歌在网上推广开来。去年，这一构想为布罗尼—门萨赢得“英国最杰出的黑人学生”的奖项。该计划是这样的：你可以花7英镑，在GiveMeTap网站上购买一个用再生铝制成的干净蓝色水瓶，带着这个瓶子进入任何一间和该网站建立了“合作关系”的咖啡馆就可以免费灌满自来水，这样一来不但可以省下买瓶装水的钱，减少垃圾堆填区的废弃塑料瓶，而且部分金额（买水瓶的7英镑中的70%）还将用于为非洲贫困国家安装干净的水泵。
虽然这一计划目前只在曼彻斯特地区推行，但是为了促成该计划在伦敦的启动，布罗尼—门萨已经搬到了伦敦和父母一起住。他希望可以借伦敦奥运会的契机来推广自己的计划。如果一切顺利，到2013年，他将能为100万人提供干净的饮用水。
这一切听上去很高尚，但是在目前的经济环境下，寒窗苦读7年获得了博士学位，本来完全可以在城中金融界找到报酬优厚的工作，却要去推行这么一项非盈利性的计划，而且还要去做数学家教来帮补房租，这样的选择似乎太疯狂。“我知道，”他笑着说，“我所有的朋友都是银行家，而我则是他们的穷同学。但这就是我的选择。”坦白地说，这个世界上的银行家已经够多了，就让像布罗尼—门萨博士那样的人把看似显而易见的点子变成改变人生的计划吧。
波比·丁思（23岁）：时尚博主
伦敦时装周的第一天，上午10点，波比·丁思已经被拍了4次。“我想是这件大衣的原因，”她一边说，一边摆出姿势让另一位时尚博客达人为她那淡黄色的巴宝莉橡皮雨衣拍照。“基本上，我就像一支会走路的‘荧光笔’。”
这件大衣只是一个例子，它展示了丁思那神奇的时尚触觉——她总是能轻而易举地捕捉住最新的衣着潮流。去年，她将这一才能变成了生财之道。她创建了一个名为“今天我穿了什么”的博客（wiwt.com）。正如其名，这个博客定期上传丁思每天穿着的照片，还配上她的点评（比如一条镶饰着驯鹿图案的无袖连衣裙的点评是：“非常有圣诞气息。”）博客上还详细列出了衣服的购买地点。丁思可以从每一笔通过其博客wiwt.com达成的交易中获得一定比例的提成。
“创建这个博客是我的新年决心之一，” 丁思坐在伦敦萨摩塞特中心外一边喝着咖啡一边说。“之前，我在推特上发布过自己的时装照片。在创办‘今天我穿了什么’这个博客之前，我已经拥有了2500名‘粉丝’，于是我决定尝试一年，看看结果如何。这一点都不难。我是说，反正我每天都要穿衣服。”
但是，丁思把穿衣打扮变成了一种成功的商业模式：现在，她正打算将这个博客扩展成一个社交网站，这样一来，任何人都可以将自己的日常时装照上传到网上，然后在国内不同地区举行比赛，由用户们投票选出利兹、曼彻斯特或其他城市的“最时尚达人。”同样的，根据和商家事先达成的协议，经由该网站达成的每笔交易，网站都可以从中获得一定的收益。沃达丰电信公司对丁思的博客印象深刻，邀请她作为其公司的代表博主参加这次伦敦时装周。
“网站的收入基本能够维持它的运作，不过我这次来时装周则是沃达丰电信公司出钱，这笔赞助让我没有后顾之忧，”她说道，“迄今为止，我最大的一笔支出是购买网站域名所花费的4000英镑，因为我意识到，如果我想要创建一个全球品牌，没有一个后缀为‘.com’的域名是不行的。”
丁思2008年毕业于伦敦大学学院，专业是经济学、商业与东欧研究，或许，对这样一位女性而言，创建时装博客是一个奇怪的职业选择。但丁思强调，她从来就不喜欢那种传统的办公室工作。毕业后，她曾在两家新网络公司工作，专门帮人物色房产。“如果我很努力地工作，最终人家却看不到我努力的成果，这会让我很生气。而且我实在厌倦了在地产中介公司工作。”于是，她搬回父母家，着手创建“今天我穿了什么”这一博客。那么她是否已经计划好明天要穿什么？“哦，是的。我早就把它们写下来了，一周的穿着都想好了。”她笑着说道，“我把自己的‘强迫症’变成了一门生意。”
我们青年有力量
至今依然记得2009年冬天的某个晚上，我和Lavender一起跟随美国可持续发展社区协会（Institute for Sustainable Communities，简称ISC，美国的一个NGO组织）广州分部的三位负责人以及一些来自广东各高校的学生志愿者们一起前往广东省珠海市斗门镇南门小学，参加由该组织策划的一场“亲子环保游园会”。在游园会的“环保飞行棋”活动中，我看到了难忘的一幕：因为人多，队伍有点混乱，其中一位家长性子比较急想插队，但他的孩子则坚持按先后顺序排队并组织大家有序地开展活动，他的爸爸一开始很不悦，后来则开心地帮着孩子一起维持现场秩序……这只是生活中的一个小片段，却让我看到了一种力量——青少年的影响力！
正如梁启超那篇脍炙人口的散文《少年中国说》中所言：“少年智则国智，少年富则国富，少年强则国强，少年独立则国独立，少年自由则国自由，少年进步则国进步。”青少年的影响力绝对不容忽视！本期我们就来聚焦青少年的力量，看看朝气蓬勃、意气风发的他们如何“指点江山，挥斥方遒”，如何化“点子”为行动，进而梦想成真！
——Maisie
Today’s internet-3)savvy students are starting their own businesses and 4)forging their own path in life…and here are two prime examples:
Edwin Broni-Mensah, 25: Creator of GiveMeTap
Edwin Broni-Mensah, you could argue, is an 5)academic or a 6)philanthropist whose scheme is either 7)naively idealistic or brilliant or both. Either way, as soon as you’ve read about his idea, you’ll be 8)kicking yourself for not having thought of it. We’re sitting beside 9)the Serpentine on an unusually warm winter morning in London’s 10)Hyde Park. Broni-Mensah is patiently 11)expounding the perils of toxic 12)BPA plastic bottles. 13)Phasing out these hateful bottles is the aim of his project, now in its second year.
It was through playing 14)squash at university that Broni-Mensah came up with GiveMeTap. Throughout his PhD, sport was his 15)sanctuary, yet something didn’t 16)add up: “Tap water is free and portable yet I was spending a 17)fiver a day on bottled water. I was like, ‘Why?’”
The concept of GiveMeTap was born, launched online for a song, and last year won him an award as “most outstanding black student in Britain”. It works like this: you buy a tidy blue bottle made from recycled aluminium for £7 from his website and take it into any cafe which has signed up as a “provider” of the scheme. Your bottle is then filled with tap water for free, thus reducing the wastage in 18)landfill sites, helping communities in Africa install clean water pumps (70% of the £7 goes towards this) and saving your money.
Although the scheme currently operates solely in the 19)Manchester area, Broni-Mensah has moved in with his parents in London, in order to launch it in London, it’s hoped, in time for the Olympics. In theory, he’ll be providing 1 million people with access to clean water by 2013.
All very 20)benevolent but still, given the current climate, it seems 21)bonkers to invest seven years of education into a non-profit scheme, 22)subsidizing your rent by tutoring maths when you could be 23)making a packet in the City. “I know,” he laughs. “All my friends are bankers and I’m their poor student mate. But it’s my choice.” And, frankly, there are enough bankers to go round, allowing people like Dr. Broni-Mensah to turn 24)staggeringly obvious ideas into life-changing schemes.
Poppy Dinsey, 23: Fashion blogger
It is 10 am on the first day of 25)London fashion week and Poppy Dinsey has already been photographed four times. “I think it’s the coat,” she says as yet another blogging 26)fashionista takes a 27)snap of her 28)canary yellow 29)Burberry 30)mackintosh. “I am a walking 31)highlighter, essentially.”
The coat is just one example of Dinsey’s 32)uncanny ability to 33)channel the latest 34)sartorial trends 35)with 36)consummate ease. Last year, she turned this talent into a thriving business by launching What I Wore Today (wiwt.com), a blog that does exactly what it says on the tin by uploading photographs of Dinsey’s chosen outfit on a regular basis, accompanied by her commentary (a 37)jumper featuring an 38)appliqué39)reindeer is deemed: “Well Christmassy.”). The website has details of where to buy the clothes, and for each sale directed through wiwt.com, Dinsey gets a40)percentage.
“I started the site as a new year’s resolution,” she says, sipping a coffee outside Somerset House in London. “I was already posting what I wore on Twitter. I had 2,500 followers before I launched the site and I thought I’d try it for a year to see what happened. It wasn’t a pain to do. I mean, I’m getting dressed every day anyway.”
But Dinsey has turned getting dressed into a successful business model: there are now plans to expand the site into a social network where anyone can upload their daily outfits and where there will be competitions in different parts of the country where users can vote for “the most fashionable” in 41)Leeds, Manchester or other cities. Again, any sale made through the website will be 42)monetized through affiliate deals. 43)Vodafone was so impressed by Dinsey that it recruited her to be an official blogger at London fashion week.
“The site kind of supports itself but I’m here being paid by Vodafone and that sponsorship is what keeps me 44)afloat,” she says. “The biggest 45)outlay was £4,000 to buy the 46)domain name because I realized if I was trying to build a global brand, it wasn’t going to work without the dotcom.”
It is, perhaps, a curious career for a woman who graduated from 47)UCL in economics, business and East European studies in 2008, but Dinsey insists she never liked the traditional office environment. After graduating, she worked for two web start-up companies specializing in property searches—“If I worked hard on something and it didn’t get used, I’d be furious. And I got really sick of working with estate agents.” Instead, she moved back in with her parents, and set up What I Wore Today. And does she already know what she will be wearing tomorrow? “Oh yeah. I’ve got it all written down and planned for the week ahead.” She laughs. “I’ve turned my 48)OCD into a business.”
今天，深谙互联网技术的学生们正在创立属于他们自己的事业，开创自己的人生之路……这里就有两个极好的榜样：
埃德温·布罗尼—门萨（25岁）：GiveMeTap网站创始人
你可以说埃德温·布罗尼—门萨是一名学究，或是一名慈善家，至于他提出的计划，你也许会觉得天真又充满理想主义色彩，也许会觉得精妙绝伦，又或许是两者兼而有之。无论如何，一旦听说了他的想法，你大概会严厉自责：“我为什么就没有想到呢？”在一个少有的温暖冬日上午，我们坐在伦敦海德公园的九曲湖边。布罗尼—门萨正在耐心而详细地解释有毒双酚A塑料瓶的危害。他正在进行的计划旨在逐渐淘汰这些可恶的瓶子，目前这个计划已经进入第二年。
在大学时，布罗尼—门萨热爱打壁球，正是这段经历让他萌生了创建网站GiveMeTap（给我自来水）的想法。读博期间，运动一直是他的“避难所”，但是他总觉得有什么地方不合理：“自来水是免费的，而且可以携带，但我却每天花五英磅购买瓶装水。我就想，‘为什么呢？’”
GiveMeTap的想法就此诞生，并通过一首广告歌在网上推广开来。去年，这一构想为布罗尼—门萨赢得“英国最杰出的黑人学生”的奖项。该计划是这样的：你可以花7英镑，在GiveMeTap网站上购买一个用再生铝制成的干净蓝色水瓶，带着这个瓶子进入任何一间和该网站建立了“合作关系”的咖啡馆就可以免费灌满自来水，这样一来不但可以省下买瓶装水的钱，减少垃圾堆填区的废弃塑料瓶，而且部分金额（买水瓶的7英镑中的70%）还将用于为非洲贫困国家安装干净的水泵。
虽然这一计划目前只在曼彻斯特地区推行，但是为了促成该计划在伦敦的启动，布罗尼—门萨已经搬到了伦敦和父母一起住。他希望可以借伦敦奥运会的契机来推广自己的计划。如果一切顺利，到2013年，他将能为100万人提供干净的饮用水。
这一切听上去很高尚，但是在目前的经济环境下，寒窗苦读7年获得了博士学位，本来完全可以在城中金融界找到报酬优厚的工作，却要去推行这么一项非盈利性的计划，而且还要去做数学家教来帮补房租，这样的选择似乎太疯狂。“我知道，”他笑着说，“我所有的朋友都是银行家，而我则是他们的穷同学。但这就是我的选择。”坦白地说，这个世界上的银行家已经够多了，就让像布罗尼—门萨博士那样的人把看似显而易见的点子变成改变人生的计划吧。
波比·丁思（23岁）：时尚博主
伦敦时装周的第一天，上午10点，波比·丁思已经被拍了4次。“我想是这件大衣的原因，”她一边说，一边摆出姿势让另一位时尚博客达人为她那淡黄色的巴宝莉橡皮雨衣拍照。“基本上，我就像一支会走路的‘荧光笔’。”
这件大衣只是一个例子，它展示了丁思那神奇的时尚触觉——她总是能轻而易举地捕捉住最新的衣着潮流。去年，她将这一才能变成了生财之道。她创建了一个名为“今天我穿了什么”的博客（wiwt.com）。正如其名，这个博客定期上传丁思每天穿着的照片，还配上她的点评（比如一条镶饰着驯鹿图案的无袖连衣裙的点评是：“非常有圣诞气息。”）博客上还详细列出了衣服的购买地点。丁思可以从每一笔通过其博客wiwt.com达成的交易中获得一定比例的提成。
“创建这个博客是我的新年决心之一，” 丁思坐在伦敦萨摩塞特中心外一边喝着咖啡一边说。“之前，我在推特上发布过自己的时装照片。在创办‘今天我穿了什么’这个博客之前，我已经拥有了2500名‘粉丝’，于是我决定尝试一年，看看结果如何。这一点都不难。我是说，反正我每天都要穿衣服。”
但是，丁思把穿衣打扮变成了一种成功的商业模式：现在，她正打算将这个博客扩展成一个社交网站，这样一来，任何人都可以将自己的日常时装照上传到网上，然后在国内不同地区举行比赛，由用户们投票选出利兹、曼彻斯特或其他城市的“最时尚达人。”同样的，根据和商家事先达成的协议，经由该网站达成的每笔交易，网站都可以从中获得一定的收益。沃达丰电信公司对丁思的博客印象深刻，邀请她作为其公司的代表博主参加这次伦敦时装周。
“网站的收入基本能够维持它的运作，不过我这次来时装周则是沃达丰电信公司出钱，这笔赞助让我没有后顾之忧，”她说道，“迄今为止，我最大的一笔支出是购买网站域名所花费的4000英镑，因为我意识到，如果我想要创建一个全球品牌，没有一个后缀为‘.com’的域名是不行的。”
丁思2008年毕业于伦敦大学学院，专业是经济学、商业与东欧研究，或许，对这样一位女性而言，创建时装博客是一个奇怪的职业选择。但丁思强调，她从来就不喜欢那种传统的办公室工作。毕业后，她曾在两家新网络公司工作，专门帮人物色房产。“如果我很努力地工作，最终人家却看不到我努力的成果，这会让我很生气。而且我实在厌倦了在地产中介公司工作。”于是，她搬回父母家，着手创建“今天我穿了什么”这一博客。那么她是否已经计划好明天要穿什么？“哦，是的。我早就把它们写下来了，一周的穿着都想好了。”她笑着说道，“我把自己的‘强迫症’变成了一门生意。”