Pierre Omidyar慈善革命家養成記

在這個信息化革命的時代，英雄輩出，于是你聽慣了那個經典的故事：一個青年，讀大學時對讀書毫無興趣，于是輟學創業，開始編程序，出人意料地很快成為千萬富翁，進而搖身一變又成為人人稱道的慈善家。是的，今天又是這樣的故事，不過這次的主角Pierre Omidyar卻是一個將信息化革命帶入慈善甚至政治領域的慈善家，他的故事由金錢、慈善和政治三者的革命交織而成。在《私人飛機》對Pierre Omidyar的專訪中，他將向你講述他的故事與革命。

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簡介：

拍賣網站易貝（Ebay）上市后，這位時年31歲的網站創始人就已成為億萬富翁。隨后，他一直致力于慈善事業，通過自己的奧米迪亞網絡（Omidyar Network），他已經為非洲的科技初創企業和夏威夷的食草牛肉等五花八門的慈善創業項目捐資。他的非營利性組織人類聯合組織（Humanity United）致力于反現代奴隸制。

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.

從IT屌絲到慈善新人

Pierre Omidyar在接受《私人飛機》專訪時，說他一直認為自己的成功是一個“天上掉餡餅”的案例，而自己感覺非常不習慣，所以在易貝上市后的前幾年他一直住著以前的普通房屋，開以前的舊車。這個天上掉餡餅的感受正是他走上慈善之路的真實原因。

Pierre Omidyar至今依然清晰記得他搖身一變成為億萬富豪的那天的每一個情節。他說：“我的慈善之路是從1998年的9月開始的，就是那一天——易貝上市的那一天。之前我花了兩個星期安排公司上市前的路演，到了高盛在紐約的辦公室后，已經筋疲力盡，實際上整個路演非常虎頭蛇尾。長久以來我們一直假想有一天公司能夠上市，直到那天股市開盤我們的股票真的在市場上流通，但是情況卻完全不是像預想中的那樣。你要等銀行家們先做他們的第一筆交易，然后股市開盤，我們一圈人站在交易大廳無所事事，完全沒有人注意到我們。在墻上有一個電子計時器，大約45分鐘以后，有人提醒我們可以開始找易貝在哪了，于是，幾分鐘后我們看到易貝的股票代碼已經從右邊移到左邊，我們歡呼擁抱擊掌慶祝。”

“當天我們的股價是每股18美元，我的股份總共也就價值近億美元。但是隨著那一天每股價格漲到了將近54美元，而我的股份就像所有的行內人士一樣，將會凍結6個月，所以在那時一切都只是一張紙而已。但是在不久以后，這張紙上，我的股票價值很快就超過了10億美元。我頓時感到很震驚和意外。”

“很快我和我的未婚妻Pam（現在是我的妻子）進行了一次對話，談話的主題是關于擁有了這些財富以后我們要做什么？很明顯，這已經超出了我們自己所需要的財富，而且是迅速累積到如此之多：從我給易貝編寫初始程序開始到易貝上市，實際上只經過了3年，所以基本上根本就沒有那種類似‘噢，這真的是我們贏來的——我已經花了畢生的時間來經營這一切’的感覺，我們頓時感到有責任給這些資源找一個好的用途。”

“于是，幾個月內我們就急急忙忙創造出一個非盈利性質的家族基金，希望能用‘天上掉下來’的財富去幫助其他人。隨后我們開始給這個慈善組織一些錢，然后又給那個慈善組織一些錢，這是一個簡單又容易引起關注的方法，就像我們常常在報紙上讀到的那種新聞一樣，它們的標題都可以叫‘讓我們來捐錢’。漸漸地，我認為自己需要做的是慈善事業，而非慈善行為。”

Pierre Omidyar說：“很多人分不清楚慈善行為（charity）和慈善事業（philanthropy）之間的區別，但是對我來說，它們之間有很明顯的差別。當我用charity這個詞時，我認為是指‘需要解決眼下迫在眉睫的痛苦’，它是純粹的慷慨，由憐憫之心激起的慷慨。而philanthropy卻不同，這個詞來自于拉丁語，意思是“人類的愛”，慈善事業是一種想要改善人類及他們的世界的愿望。它需要我們去思考一個事件的根源，然后我們就能夠使這種事情不會再發生。”

基于這樣的理念，2004年，Pierre Omidyar建立了Omidyar Nework創業機構。這是一個支持個人創業并幫助他們制定、完善創業規劃的平臺。通過這個平臺，很多人獲得了新的職業機會與謀生之道。而這不僅能改變這些創新者的生活，同時他們的創造力也會影響世界。

從給予到解放

Omidyar Network使得Omidyar夫婦找到了自己在商業以外更有價值的事業，從此他們不斷進行著慈善事業上的革命。

2012年，Pierre Omidyar在尼泊爾的首都加德滿都調研時，一直手持攝像機記錄著周圍的一切。在這個易貝富翁所能見到的方圓幾百里內，到處是比房子還高的巨大煙囪，還有在冬日的太陽下堆積如山的紅磚塊，看起來只有十歲出頭的小孩用力從這些高溫的房子內搬運磚塊，每次背負磚塊的重量都超出他們的承受能力。在尼泊爾的磚塊生產地Bhaktapur，可以說90%的勞動者都是奴隸。他們每天的勞動帶來的只是更多的負債，因為人販子介紹工作和住處時交了“贊助費”，這要從他們每天的工作所得中抽取。

隨著Omidyar的不斷調查，他漸漸發現自己看到的并不是全部。“他們不讓我們去看那些更糟糕的窯”，他說：“因此我估計，如果這些‘好’窯都是這樣，那些差的就可想而知了。”

其實眼前的這個問題是他一直在關注的一個主題：如何解放現代奴隸。在此之前他們已經花費大量的資金來研究這個課題。而此時，尼泊爾明顯成為了他們的研究案例，如果能夠成功杜絕尼泊爾的“奴隸童工”問題，它將會成為全球性的模仿案例。

Omidyar資助創建了一個合法幫助童工的項目，使Bhaktapur的孩子們不再被迫與人販子簽訂非法合同。首先，他們投入60萬美元的補助金，用于幫助2500名在工作中的孩子脫離危險骯臟的磚窯，然后送他們去讀書。接著，Omidyar投入更多資金，進行輔助創業和金錢管理訓練的計劃，從而使得4000名成年磚窯工能夠脫離奴隸的命運。

在過去的幾年中，在抵制惡性卻利潤巨大的非法人口貿易方面，Omidyar已經成為了最大的私人捐助者。他已將115萬美元投入到自己旗下的Humanity United基金會中，其中有85個反奴隸貿易的非盈利機構，并且在5個國家建有當地的項目，其中的第一個項目就建立在尼泊爾。他們計劃將在2016年前再投入5000萬美元到這場斗爭之中。

他們正在與越來越專業化的走私集團進行斗爭，這類集團中有很多都受到犯罪組織的支持，每年從中謀利高達30億美元以上。但Omidyar正在通過其建立的Humanity United組織以及他強大的影響力去贏得這場斗爭。

建立Humanity United是他的妻子Pam的想法。2000年，當她在巴黎瀏覽一本國家地理雜志時，看到了蘇丹達爾富爾的故事，當時她被蘇丹的童軍和販賣難民的事實震驚了。隨后她做了很多研究，但發現很難找到關于現代社會奴隸的報道，甚至沒有足夠證據來吸引那些富有的慈善家。于是Pam決定建立一個反對“現代社會奴隸制度”的組織，也就是現在的Humanity United。

蘇丹和尼泊爾一樣，也是他們名單上首要被關注的對象，其中還有剛果、利比亞，當然還有美國。在這些地方，4萬女人、男人還有孩子一直深陷性奴隸、無薪酬勞力或其他苦力勞動場所的深淵中。

Omidyar在美國發現了為數不多的反“奴隸制”非政府組織，絕大部分都很小并且孤軍奮戰。其中某些組織都在為反人口販賣的相關立法而進行長期游說，但是只得到很少的資金支持和外援。

Omidyar和妻子Pam建立的Humanity United，找到美國當時一些較好的反奴隸制非盈利組織，將它們整合起來，建立了一個叫做Alliance to End Slavery Trafficking的組織作為他們的保護傘，然后投資了800萬美元給這12個組織。同時，他們并沒有對這些組織的活動進行過多的干涉，相信他們自己能夠進行最有效的相互合作來促進議會立法。

這種協作形式的靈感來自于Omidyar過去的一個項目，這個項目由20個多名編程者共同完成，Omidyar給了他們自由的創作平臺以及懷疑項目進程的權利，結果每個人都沒有令他失望。如今，他將這種創業形態運用到了慈善領域。

從慈善到政治？

顯然Omidyar正在他的慈善事業成就感中不斷“自我膨脹”，他在“追求個體的自由與解放”方面已經走到了一個接近于政治解放的層面。隨后質疑聲接踵而來，很多人指出“Pierre Omidyar是一個極端自由主義者甚至是無政府主義者”，尤其是在他大力資助美國自由主義政客后，這些批評日趨尖銳。

然而Pierre Omidyar從沒有因這些質疑而懷疑自己的信仰，他只說：“我只是認為，世界上的每一個人都有成功的潛質和可能性，只是很多人沒有一個展現自我的平臺，他們的天賦得不到發揮，而我的任務是給盡可能多的人創造這個充分自由的平臺。”

很快他新一輪的“自由主義”革命又到來了。他與讓美國政府頭痛的著名記者、斯諾登事件的爆料人Glenn Greenwald共同創建了一個名為First Look Media的自由媒體平臺。Omidyar希望First Look Media成為一個獨立記者們自由報道的據點，他會在調研、技術、法律方面給予記者們足夠的支持，并且該平臺的網站和電子雜志會聘請一個頂級的編輯團隊。

這是一個比慈善更加深刻的課題。Omidyar強調說：“媒體的力量，尤其是媒體在民主自由領域的力量非常重要。現在，我們看到媒體自由受到了一些打擊，而媒體收集信息的原則也正在受到打擊。即使我們這樣一個法律意識超強的國家，新聞自由依然正在受到攻擊。”正基于此，Omidyar建立了自由的First Look Media新聞平臺。Omidyar表示是First Look Media將和他最重要的慈善事業融為一體的，他渴望建立一個強大自由的媒體來作為支撐自己龐大慈善事業的一種可量化的力量。

很顯然，從20年前編寫易貝的程序開始，Pierre Omidyar就從未停止過他IT屌絲的逆襲。這個逆襲帶著世界范圍的影響力，從網絡到慈善，再到新聞事業，他總是力圖掀起革命，并引發各種爭議，不過無論如何，他幫助世界上無數人實現了經濟獨立，并試圖讓更多人看到新聞真相。

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 umbrella–the Alliance to End Slavery Trafficking–and 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.