Pierre Omidyar慈善革命家养成记

在这个信息化革命的时代，英雄辈出，于是你听惯了那个经典的故事：一个青年，读大学时对读书毫无兴趣，于是辍学创业，开始编程序，出人意料地很快成为千万富翁，进而摇身一变又成为人人称道的慈善家。是的，今天又是这样的故事，不过这次的主角Pierre Omidyar却是一个将信息化革命带入慈善甚至政治领域的慈善家，他的故事由金钱、慈善和政治三者的革命交织而成。在《私人飞机》对Pierre Omidyar的专访中，他将向你讲述他的故事与革命。

The information age has no lack of self-made success stories， some of which you might be very familiar with： a young man dropped out of college， started to write codes， fast became a millionaire， and soon turned into a philanthropist. Yes， this is such a story， except the hero this time， Pierre Omidyar， is a revolutionist who continues his revolution from information technology to charity and very likely to politics. This is a story about money， charity and politics.

Pierre Omidyar简介：

拍卖网站易贝（Ebay）上市后，这位时年31岁的网站创始人就已成为亿万富翁。随后，他一直致力于慈善事业，通过自己的奥米迪亚网络（Omidyar Network），他已经为非洲的科技初创企业和夏威夷的食草牛肉等五花八门的慈善创业项目捐资。他的非营利性组织人类联合组织（Humanity United）致力于反现代奴隶制。

About Pierre Omidyar，

Becoming a billionaire at age 31 as ebay went public， Pierre Omidyar turned his commitment to charity. Through the Omidyar Network， he has invested in an array of charity startup ranging from high-tech startups in Africa to Hawaii beef business. He also founded Humanity United， a non-profit organization dedicated to ending modern slavery.

从IT潘康酱壬菩氯

Pierre Omidyar在接受《私人飞机》专访时，说他一直认为自己的成功是一个“天上掉馅饼”的案例，而自己感觉非常不习惯，所以在易贝上市后的前几年他一直住着以前的普通房屋，开以前的旧车。这个天上掉馅饼的感受正是他走上慈善之路的真实原因。

Pierre Omidyar至今依然清晰记得他摇身一变成为亿万富豪的那天的每一个情节。他说：“我的慈善之路是从1998年的9月开始的，就是那一天――易贝上市的那一天。之前我花了两个星期安排公司上市前的路演，到了高盛在纽约的办公室后，已经筋疲力尽，实际上整个路演非常虎头蛇尾。长久以来我们一直假想有一天公司能够上市，直到那天股市开盘我们的股票真的在市场上流通，但是情况却完全不是像预想中的那样。你要等银行家们先做他们的第一笔交易，然后股市开盘，我们一圈人站在交易大厅无所事事，完全没有人注意到我们。在墙上有一个电子计时器，大约45分钟以后，有人提醒我们可以开始找易贝在哪了，于是，几分钟后我们看到易贝的股票代码已经从右边移到左边，我们欢呼拥抱击掌庆祝。”

“当天我们的股价是每股18美元，我的股份总共也就价值近亿美元。但是随着那一天每股价格涨到了将近54美元，而我的股份就像所有的行内人士一样，将会冻结6个月，所以在那时一切都只是一张纸而已。但是在不久以后，这张纸上，我的股票价值很快就超过了10亿美元。我顿时感到很震惊和意外。”

“很快我和我的未婚妻Pam（现在是我的妻子）进行了一次对话，谈话的主题是关于拥有了这些财富以后我们要做什么？很明显，这已经超出了我们自己所需要的财富，而且是迅速累积到如此之多：从我给易贝编写初始程序开始到易贝上市，实际上只经过了3年，所以基本上根本就没有那种类似‘噢，这真的是我们赢来的――我已经花了毕生的时间来经营这一切’的感觉，我们顿时感到有责任给这些资源找一个好的用途。”

“于是，几个月内我们就急急忙忙创造出一个非盈利性质的家族基金，希望能用‘天上掉下来’的财富去帮助其他人。随后我们开始给这个慈善组织一些钱，然后又给那个慈善组织一些钱，这是一个简单又容易引起关注的方法，就像我们常常在报纸上读到的那种新闻一样，它们的标题都可以叫‘让我们来捐钱’。渐渐地，我认为自己需要做的是慈善事业，而非慈善行为。”

Pierre Omidyar说：“很多人分不清楚慈善行为（charity）和慈善事业（philanthropy）之间的区别，但是对我来说，它们之间有很明显的差别。当我用charity这个词时，我认为是指‘需要解决眼下迫在眉睫的痛苦’，它是纯粹的慷慨，由怜悯之心激起的慷慨。而philanthropy却不同，这个词来自于拉丁语，意思是“人类的爱”，慈善事业是一种想要改善人类及他们的世界的愿望。它需要我们去思考一个事件的根源，然后我们就能够使这种事情不会再发生。”

基于这样的理念，2004年，Pierre Omidyar建立了Omidyar Nework创业机构。这是一个支持个人创业并帮助他们制定、完善创业规划的平台。通过这个平台，很多人获得了新的职业机会与谋生之道。而这不仅能改变这些创新者的生活，同时他们的创造力也会影响世界。

从给予到解放

Omidyar Network使得Omidyar夫妇找到了自己在商业以外更有价值的事业，从此他们不断进行着慈善事业上的革命。

2012年，Pierre Omidyar在尼泊尔的首都加德满都调研时，一直手持摄像机记录着周围的一切。在这个易贝富翁所能见到的方圆几百里内，到处是比房子还高的巨大烟囱，还有在冬日的太阳下堆积如山的红砖块，看起来只有十岁出头的小孩用力从这些高温的房子内搬运砖块，每次背负砖块的重量都超出他们的承受能力。在尼泊尔的砖块生产地Bhaktapur，可以说90%的劳动者都是奴隶。他们每天的劳动带来的只是更多的负债，因为人贩子介绍工作和住处时交了“赞助费”，这要从他们每天的工作所得中抽取。

随着Omidyar的不断调查，他渐渐发现自己看到的并不是全部。“他们不让我们去看那些更糟糕的窑”，他说：“因此我估计，如果这些‘好’窑都是这样，那些差的就可想而知了。”

其实眼前的这个问题是他一直在关注的一个主题：如何解放现代奴隶。在此之前他们已经花费大量的资金来研究这个课题。而此时，尼泊尔明显成为了他们的研究案例，如果能够成功杜绝尼泊尔的“奴隶童工”问题，它将会成为全球性的模仿案例。

Omidyar资助创建了一个合法帮助童工的项目，使Bhaktapur的孩子们不再被迫与人贩子签订非法合同。首先，他们投入60万美元的补助金，用于帮助2500名在工作中的孩子脱离危险肮脏的砖窑，然后送他们去读书。接着，Omidyar投入更多资金，进行辅助创业和金钱管理训练的计划，从而使得4000名成年砖窑工能够脱离奴隶的命运。

在过去的几年中，在抵制恶性却利润巨大的非法人口贸易方面，Omidyar已经成为了最大的私人捐助者。他已将115万美元投入到自己旗下的Humanity United基金会中，其中有85个反奴隶贸易的非盈利机构，并且在5个国家建有当地的项目，其中的第一个项目就建立在尼泊尔。他们计划将在2016年前再投入5000万美元到这场斗争之中。

他们正在与越来越专业化的走私集团进行斗争，这类集团中有很多都受到犯罪组织的支持，每年从中谋利高达30亿美元以上。但Omidyar正在通过其建立的Humanity United组织以及他强大的影响力去赢得这场斗争。

建立Humanity United是他的妻子Pam的想法。2000年，当她在巴黎浏览一本国家地理杂志时，看到了苏丹达尔富尔的故事，当时她被苏丹的童军和贩卖难民的事实震惊了。随后她做了很多研究，但发现很难找到关于现代社会奴隶的报道，甚至没有足够证据来吸引那些富有的慈善家。于是Pam决定建立一个反对“现代社会奴隶制度”的组织，也就是现在的Humanity United。

苏丹和尼泊尔一样，也是他们名单上首要被关注的对象，其中还有刚果、利比亚，当然还有美国。在这些地方，4万女人、男人还有孩子一直深陷隶、无薪酬劳力或其他苦力劳动场所的深渊中。

Omidyar在美国发现了为数不多的反“奴隶制”非政府组织，绝大部分都很小并且孤军奋战。其中某些组织都在为反人口贩卖的相关立法而进行长期游说，但是只得到很少的资金支持和外援。

Omidyar和妻子Pam建立的Humanity United，找到美国当时一些较好的反奴隶制非盈利组织，将它们整合起来，建立了一个叫做Alliance to End Slavery & Trafficking的组织作为他们的保护伞，然后投资了800万美元给这12个组织。同时，他们并没有对这些组织的活动进行过多的干涉，相信他们自己能够进行最有效的相互合作来促进议会立法。

这种协作形式的灵感来自于Omidyar过去的一个项目，这个项目由20个多名编程者共同完成，Omidyar给了他们自由的创作平台以及怀疑项目进程的权利，结果每个人都没有令他失望。如今，他将这种创业形态运用到了慈善领域。

从慈善到政治？

显然Omidyar正在他的慈善事业成就感中不断“自我膨胀”，他在“追求个体的自由与解放”方面已经走到了一个接近于政治解放的层面。随后质疑声接踵而来，很多人指出“Pierre Omidyar是一个极端自由主义者甚至是无政府主义者”，尤其是在他大力资助美国自由主义政客后，这些批评日趋尖锐。

然而Pierre Omidyar从没有因这些质疑而怀疑自己的信仰，他只说：“我只是认为，世界上的每一个人都有成功的潜质和可能性，只是很多人没有一个展现自我的平台，他们的天赋得不到发挥，而我的任务是给尽可能多的人创造这个充分自由的平台。”

很快他新一轮的“自由主义”革命又到来了。他与让美国政府头痛的著名记者、斯诺登事件的爆料人Glenn Greenwald共同创建了一个名为First Look Media的自由媒体平台。Omidyar希望First Look Media成为一个独立记者们自由报道的据点，他会在调研、技术、法律方面给予记者们足够的支持，并且该平台的网站和电子杂志会聘请一个顶级的编辑团队。

这是一个比慈善更加深刻的课题。Omidyar强调说：“媒体的力量，尤其是媒体在民主自由领域的力量非常重要。现在，我们看到媒体自由受到了一些打击，而媒体收集信息的原则也正在受到打击。即使我们这样一个法律意识超强的国家，新闻自由依然正在受到攻击。”正基于此，Omidyar建立了自由的First Look Media新闻平台。Omidyar表示是First Look Media将和他最重要的慈善事业融为一体的，他渴望建立一个强大自由的媒体来作为支撑自己庞大慈善事业的一种可量化的力量。

很显然，从20年前编写易贝的程序开始，Pierre Omidyar就从未停止过他IT潘康哪嫦。这个逆袭带着世界范围的影响力，从网络到慈善，再到新闻事业，他总是力图掀起革命，并引发各种争议，不过无论如何，他帮助世界上无数人实现了经济独立，并试图让更多人看到新闻真相。

From A Nerd to A Philanthropist

Pierre Omidyar has always attributed his success to luck. He was so not used to his rise to richness that in the first years after Ebay’s public offering， he was still living in his old apartment and driving his old car. This sense of feeling is what drives him to engage in charity.

He still remembers every detail of the day when he became a billionaire： My journey as a philanthropist began in September 1998， on the day eBay went public. I’d spent two weeks helping with the pre-IPO road show， and we’d arrived at the New York office of Goldman Sachs exhausted. The actual moment was not exactly what we have expected. You have to wait for the bankers to do their initial trades. So when the market opened， we just stood around on the trading floor with nothing to do. Nobody was really paying attention to us. There was an electronic ticker on the wall， and after about 45 minutes somebody gave us a heads-up that we should start looking for eBay. Sure enough， a few minutes later we saw our ticker symbol coming across from right to left. We cheered； we hugged； we high-fived.

We had priced the initial public offering at $18 a share， which made my stake worth a few hundred million dollars. During the course of the day the stock rose to nearly $54. My shares， like those of all the other insiders， would be locked up for six months， so at this point it was just paper wealth. But on paper my stake was more than $1 billion. It was shocking and completely unexpected.

Soon afterward I began having conversations with my fiancee， Pam―now my wife―about what we were going to do with all that wealth. It was clearly far more than we would ever need， and it had accumulated very quickly： EBay went public three years after I wrote the original software， so there wasn’t a great sense of “Wow， we really deserve this―I’ve spent my whole life building up to it.” We felt we had a responsibility to make sure those resources got put to good use.

He said： “Many people don’t distinguish between charity and philanthropy， but to me there’s a significant difference. When I use the word “charity，” I think of what’s needed to alleviate immediate suffering. It’s just pure generosity driven by compassion， Philanthropy is much more. It comes from the Latin for “love of humanity.” Philanthropy is a desire to improve the state of humanity and the world. It requires thinking about the root causes of issues so that we can prevent tomorrow’s suffering.

It is with this belief that he founded the Omidyar Network in 2004， a platform that invests in people， offers ways of making of a living， and creates opportunities for the entrepreneurs， and through them the world.

From Giving to Liberizing

The Omidyar Network gives Omidyar and his wife a new purpose and they continue to revolutionize the charity course.

In 2012， Pierre Omidyar went to Nepal’s capital， Kathmandu， recording everything with his camera in hand. All the billionaire eBay founder could see for miles were huge， belching chimneys taller than houses and mountains of red bricks drying in the winter sun. Kids of 12 or 13 lugged bricks on their backs to and from these ovens， which was heavier than they could bear. 90% of the workers here in Bhaktapur， the heart of Nepal’s brick sector， are slaves. Day after day they incur more debt to the traffickers who found them these jobs and accommodation.

As Omidyar kept digging， he began to realize that he wasn’t seeing the whole picture. “They don’t let people like us visit the bad kilns，” he says. “I extrapolated. If this is one of the good ones， what does a bad one look like？”

It’s a question he had been working on： how to end modern slavery， on which he had invested considerable fortune. Nepal， he decided， will be his case study. If the “slave kids” issue could be addressed with success， it would be rolled out globally.

Omidyar funded to create a project so that Bhaktapur’s children won’t feel compelled to sign the human traffickers’ exploitative contracts. First up： a $600，000 grant that will pay for 2，500 working kids to leave the dangerous， dirty Nepalese kilns and go to school. Next Omidyar plans to pay for entrepreneurship and money management training to help 4，000 more brick workers escape slavery.

In the past years Omidyar has become the single biggest private donors to the fight against the pernicious but lucrative human trafficking industry. They’ve invested $115 million to date in his Humanity United foundation， which funds 85 antislavery nonprofits as well as on-the-ground projects in five countries， including this first one in Nepal. They’ve pledged to spend another $50 million by 2016.0

They’re up against increasingly sophisticated trafficking rings， many backed by organized crime， in a business that generates $30 billion in worldwide revenues a year. But Omidyar is leveraging Humanity United and his influence to win the battle.

Humanity United was his wife， Pam’s idea.During a stay in Paris in 2000， she had time to flip through a National Geographic and landed on a piece about Darfur. She was horrified at the stories of Sudanese child soldiers and trafficked refugees. She did some digging but couldn’t find much coverage of modern-day slavery in the press to attract attention from rich philanthropists. So the Omidyars decided to found an organization to end modern slavery- which is the Humanity United.P

Sudan joins Nepal on the list of countries they eventually chose to focus on， along with Congo， Liberia and the U.S.， where more than 40，000 women， men and kids are being held as sex slaves， unpaid workers， or other forms of forced labor.

In the U.S. Omidyar found a small number of antislavery NGOs， most of them small and working in isolation. Some of these organizations were lobbying for the anti-trafficking legislation with little funding and no support

Pierre and Pam， through Humanity United， found the best of these U.S. antislavery nonprofits， grouped them under one umbrellaCthe Alliance to End Slavery & TraffickingCand invested $8 million across 12 of them. They didn’t meddle much， trusting that the new group would know best how to lobby the Congress to pass related laws

This form of cooperation was inspired by one of Pierre’s past projects with twenty something computer programmers. He gave them the right tools and the right to doubt， and none disappointed him. Today， he applied his entrepreneur wisdom to the charity field.

From Charity to Politics

As he expands his charity cause into politics and his “individual freedom and liberation” is bearing on the edge of political liberation， he was met with harsh criticism and doubts. Pierre Omidyar was portrayed as an extreme liberalist and anarchist， especially when he started to sponsor liberalist

But Pierre Omidyar never casts doubt on his belief. He said： “I just believe that every individual on earth has the potential and possibility to succeed， except many are not given the platform to present and release their potential， my mission is to provide a free platform for as many people as possible. ”

And pretty soon， a new round of “liberalism” revolution is about to hit the world. Omidyar has jointed hands with Glenn Greenwald， the news breaker of Snowden and a journalist dreaded by the U.S. government， to create a media platform - First Look Media. Pierre wants First Look Media to be a stronghold for independent journalists. He will provide support in investigation， technology， and law to journalists， and will hire a best in class team of editors.

It is a topic bigger than charity. He emphasizes： “The power of media， in particular in the fields of democracy and freedom， is very important. But today， we are seeing that media freedom， and the principles of information gathering are being hit hard. Even in a country ruled by law， the freedom of news is being attacked.” It is with this conviction that he founded the First Look Media platform. He said First Media Look is what brings all his charity undertakings together， and he is eager to build a strong and free media as a quantifiable force to support his charity undertakings.

Since he started to write the codes for Ebay 20 years ago， Pierre Omidyar has never ceased his step to change the world. From internet to charity to journalism， he is always leading revolutions， although not without disputes， and no matter how he was judged， it is without doubt that he has let more and more people see the true news and has helped countless people to economic independence.