Idea #9: Pimp My Village

Hey pimp, want to help a poor village while maintaining your Godlike pimp status? Hey MTV, want to do something good?

Here’s a classic idea that blends the technology of Idea #7: Fab Labs, the style of Idea #3: Poor models and the documentariness of Idea #4: Big Tribal Brother.

As we are aware, Pimp My Ride is about turning losers’ cars into the kind of gimmicky, pimpy rides driven by richer losers who spend all their time driving around in their flatulent rides thinking they are pimp, or rather knowing they are pimp, because they are in fact pimps, and pimping was one of the illicit means by which they obtained the money to fill the inside of their cars with Playstations.

Wouldn't it be better if this was a village?

You took the words right out of my gold-grilled mouth: Rather than pimping shit cars, wouldn’t it be better to pimp shit villages?

Idea #9: Pimp My Village:

1. Create a series of documentary video shorts on villages with a way-less-than-pimp standard of living. (Featuring villages that are regularly the victim of sex trafficking swipes would be a nice touch.)
2. Create a website to feature the videos – preferably also get them on MTV.
3. Using a nice Web 2.0 interface, viewers can pimp the villages themselves à la Pimp My Ride online Ride Pimper and Idea #5: Design your own bar. (more below)
4. Make a before and after film of the pimping, à la Pimp My Ride TV show.

What’s all this about a nice Web 2.0 interface? First have a look at MTV’s clever Ride Pimper:

Look at them wheels!

Now imagine the pimp flames, pimp air sock et al. were replaced with, say, pieces of pimp farming equipment, pimp water pumps, mosquito nets. Condoms. Mobile phones. And instead of a car, there’s a village.

You can sign up and credit a bit of money to your account. Better still, MTV credits the money out of their budget. Then you get pimping!

Select a villager you saw featured in the documentary – he was complaining about not having enough medicine to deal with his AIDS – drag a bottle across and put it in his hand, done!

Pimp my terminal illness

Select a school that’s empty of books – drag a book across, it’s as easy as putting a skull on the front of your Cadillac, but it actually really does something!

Pimp My Village is the next step on from charities like Jolkona and Kiva, which already make the effects of donations tangible by allowing donations that target a particular problem, area or person. What Pimp My Village does is makes the whole process just like handing someone something across the room: “Here’s a hand-plough” – Pimped!

This classic idea was submitted by Ezra Kwong. Mr Kwong, you are destined for great things.

P.s. You can pimp a man’s village one day, but if you give him the tools he needs to pimp his own village, he can pimp it himself, over and over again. Like the sound of that? Get involved with Project #1: Buy a Fab Lab