What magic is all about

I’m sitting here — way after regular working hours would have ended on a Thursday — typing away on my laptop, trying to help raise money for the Haiti earthquake response. The little bitten apple and the words “MacBook” on my computer remind me of teamwork, both today and all the way back when I was in the sixth grade.

The Apple IIe.

The first place I ever saw a personal computer up close was in the classroom of Mr. Bill Markman, my sixth-grade mathematics teacher. It was an Apple IIe, and it was beautiful, fascinating and mysterious all at the same time. It was a doorway to another world full of endless possibilities. The blinking cursor, glowing green letters and computer programming languages like BASIC were like magic — a way to string together letters and symbols to create something altogether different. Sounds. Images. Actions.

It was heaven with 16 colours and 64 kilobytes of RAM.

Mr. Markman gave my class an assignment: learn enough BASIC to create an adventure game from scratch. And so my fellow sixth-graders and I did, over the course of several weeks. We harnessed the potential of this new tool and exerted our imaginations to make something together.

Then we played it. And it was excellent.

And now here it is, more than a couple decades later, and I feel like the work I do with my team is much the same. Every working day, we harness the potential of the tools we have — all Macs, by the way — and exert our imaginations to make something together. In our case, it’s everything you see on the Mercy Corps website. It’s all the actions you can take here.

When a disaster like the Haiti earthquake happens, we’re able to see how that work makes a difference. In the two days since disaster struck the island nation, more than 21,000 people have donated through the Mercy Corps website to our Haiti emergency response efforts. And now that money is making its way out to the field to help survivors begin to pick up the pieces, rebuild their homes and reclaim their lives.

Sitting in front of a computer, seeing a blinking cursor and typing little letters still feels like magic. And — when the programming, images and words we create come together to help caring people send assistance to families in another nation at a time of need — well, I guess that’s what magic is all about.

So I want to acknowledge my colleagues on the Mercy Corps web team for all they do — thanks, Jacob, Dan, Floyd, Chelsea, Paul and Leah.

And thanks to all of you for coming to visit our website, and caring about the world, and doing everything you do.