Creating Humanitarian Wealth

This morning I was listening to Norah Jones singing the old Randy Newman song “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today.” The lyric “human kindness is overflowing” kept kicking around in my head. I started thinking about a human kindness measuring stick. How can we measure the impact of our humanitarian behavior? A thermometer of humanitarian wealth.

Everyone at Project Write Now is creating humanitarian wealth on a daily basis. We’re cultivating human empathy through our creative and expressive writing programs. Our writers span seven decades of life experience—starting in elementary school through middle age and well beyond. By writing and sharing our stories, we’re better able to understand one another and why we are who we are. 

Our programs truly create a nurturing cycle of emotional expression and kindness that no instrument has yet been developed to measure. Maybe AI will build a system to measure it someday and we’ll all “like” each other’s humanitarian wealth metrics. 

But for now we’ll feel it in our hearts with every “ah ha” moment during one of our programs.  We’ll understand each other better when we collectively laugh or shed a tear in a classroom or during an event, and we’ll sense it when we see friends and supporters of Project Write Now smiling and nodding as we tell them how excited we are to be changing the world one person, one story at a time. 

Our PWN board and volunteers receive no financial consideration for their time and efforts. Our staff knows they could probably make more money for their time elsewhere. But what makes it all worthwhile is when at the end of the day, we know our collective humanitarian wealth is rising. During these times, what could possibly be more important? And with a little luck, maybe we’ll get to see a little human kindness overflowing.