I’ve been puzzling over how to take an idea, made real now in a NYC public school over the course of 36 weeks, and turn it into an idea worth discussing, an idea people would be happy to kick in some money to see flourish in the world.

The short version of the idea:  give primary school children the chance to play and work together, teach each other skills they’ve mastered, show the results of this in animations they produce and score.  The adults in the room keep track of time, support and admire the ideas and products, lend a hand with some technical detail the children may ask for help with.  Once in a while the adults also corral a kid who is going out of control, calm the hopped up little bugger down.  But for the most part, it’s a buzzing beehive run by the kids themselves.

I picture it functioning best in the worst schools in the city.  I’ve already seen great positive changes in several of the 14 kids who participated in the first sustained workshop.   A class clown who was disorganized, sloppy, had a dozen unfocused ideas a week evolved into a focused, ingenious animator.  She was very proud of herself, and I was too.   When I asked her the most important thing she’d learned in the workshop she said “work together.”  I gave a little yip of approval which she humorously imitated, making it even more ridiculous.   A boy who was quite egotistical and a bit of a bully became one of the most helpful and interactive kids in the group.   I imagine the transformations in “at risk” kids will be even more dramatic.

Children in most schools, particularly  in poor neighborhoods, are rarely given any autonomy outside of choosing a red or purple crayon to color in the crude outlines of some shoddily photocopied drawing, a turkey at Thanksgiving, a crudely drawn Martin Luther King Jr.’s suit during Black History Month.  The photocopy machines in slum schools always produce worn out, grey sheets, since teachers pump out work sheets by the thousands every day until the machines give out completely.  Toner is expensive and so rarely replaced until the images are almost invisible on the pages.   Creativity in those schools is considered a luxury these poor kids can’t afford.

If I would shame the well-to-do enough to fund this program I need to expand it to a number of schools.   I need a team.  How do you form a team?  Asking for volunteers has not been a sustainable strategy, when people do you a favor you must be grateful, no matter how small the favor is.   It seems to me that my assistants, the people I would groom to replace me in a room once the program is up and running, should be paid generously, at least twice minimum wage.  So I do.  But so far, I can’t help but notice a mercenary aspect to their participation.  The hours they’re paid for they work fine.  And that work, I point out, is mainly interacting with kids who are doing interesting, funny artistic projects.  Nice work if you can get it.   Unpaid hours?  I thought you said you were paying us.

If the organization had $25,000 in the bank right now, it would be less of a problem.  I will have to raise a sum like that, 1/3 cajoled out of well-to-do people I know, the rest raised from a public whose passion must be aroused by the excellent little documentary I have to make to promote the program.  I need contributions from people I know so that strangers will see the needle on the crowd-funding meter ticking constantly up in the beginning, so they will know this program has support, is gathering momentum, is an idea worth making a tax-deductible contribution to.

But how do you form a team?  Volunteers and interns must be idealists motivated by passion for the project.   Paid people must be paid, which takes money.  How do you form a goddamned team?  And if you don’t answer this question the potential of this innovative program is another bit of unmonetized good idea friends may talk about at my memorial service, lamenting briefly that for all my talent and good ideas, I never figured out how to make a living.