P4A (Project For Awesome) and the Vlogbrothers

Each December, usually the 17^th and 18^th for the past five years YouTube has been attempted to be taken over by an online community called the Nerdfighters.  This take over was started by the Vlogbrothers, John and Hank Green, when they decided that first year that they wanted to figure out a way to make YouTube no longer about cat videos but about trying to make the world a better place by decreasing what they called “world suck”.   Each year from that first year they were able to expand their deceasing of world suck with the help of people at YouTube and with the help of the community they have created from vlogging to each other and to the Nerdfighters.

(Click on the first few links to get an idea of what P4A is and who John and Hank are.  And the links at the bottom of the post are about P4A.  The YouTube page for 2011 and the website with info about P4A during 2011)

http://youtu.be/-6BgPJqAkP0

http://youtu.be/AiBPkBCL7vY

http://youtu.be/vgD1tVd9ubA

These two brothers started a project in 2007 with no idea of what would come out of vlogging each other every weekday for a year.  They didn’t know that they would have a way to branch out to more than 300 charities and bring the focus not to themselves but to the world and how it can be changed when a community comes together instead of trying to change the world on their own.

The community that the Vlogbrothers made is based upon awesome, their two rules to being apart of their community called Nerdfighteria is to 1) never be mean and 2) DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome).   This community has done more than just brought about a way for YouTuber’s to expand their world outside of their computers, they created a place where all the other Nerdfighters care about each other and feel like they belong.  Which to me can be more meaningful than raising money because it’s given people hope that the world isn’t full of evil or mean people and things. But that there are people who feel the same as you do and want you around to share the awesomeness of being awesome.  DFTBA.

http://www.youtube.com/user/project4awesome/featured

http://www.projectforawesome.com/