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People. Planet. Purpose
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Making the Future.
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Marieke Hart. Co-funder of shareyourmeal.net The power of sharing
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I believe in the power of sharing.
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And I would like to share with you why.
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My story begins with our next door neighbor, Genelva, who loves to cook.
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At least, that's what we assumed based on the delicious scent coming from her kitchen whenever she was cooking.
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Now meet my husband, Jan Thij, who loves to eat.
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Often he looked at me regretfully when he saw what I had prepared for him on his plate
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while smelling whatever was simmering in Genelva's kitchen next door.
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So we went and asked Genelva if she would share her meals with us.
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It was a little awkward at first standing there
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but luckily for us she reacted with great enthusiasm.
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So the next Saturday, we walked up to her front door with few Euros in our hands and some plates
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and after a nice chat we returned home with some delicious pumpkin soup.
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We discovered several great benefits of sharing.
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First of course that homemade meal and that you maybe could not have made yourself.
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But second, sharing is a great way to get to know your neighbors.
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And third, cooking for more people is more efficient and so less food has to be wasted.
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From that moment on Genelva cooked for us on a regular basis.
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And we were so passionate about sharing that we decided to build an online platform
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to enable people from all over the Netherlands and abroad to do it.
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That was a year ago.
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Now, over forty thousand people share food with their neighbors through our platform.
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Every evening around four hundred strangers stand in the kitchen of one of their neighbors to share food.
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Sharing is contagious.
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Since we started sharing food, I noticed opportunities for sharing everywhere.
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And I believe you all have a lot to share as well.
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Let's see hands
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to the cars.
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Who of you owns a car?
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OK. Almost everybody right?
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Did you know that on average a car sits idle twenty three hours a day.
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Why not share it?
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I don't love my car as much as the prior speakers do.
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So why not share it?
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Another question. Who of you has a book at home that you've already enjoyed and probably won't read again?
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Hands.
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I guess everybody.
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I have tons of those lying around the house.
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Probably those books still have value to someone else.
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Why not swap them?
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Last question. Who owns a ladder? Hands again.
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Take a second to think back how often you used your ladder in the last year.
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I used ours only twice.
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Why not just borrow one from one of your neighbors?
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We all have a lot to share. That's clear.
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There's even an entire sharing economy going on.
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One of the beauties of sharing economy is that access trumps ownership.
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You don't need to own everything yourself that you want to use.
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Sharing is not new.
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We've been sharing since the beginning of mankind.
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But now sharing is taking place on a much larger scale.
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And this sharing economy is stimulated by some key drivers.
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Of course, economic depression.
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People have less trust in big companies.
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There's an increasing awareness of environmental concerns.
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And there's a renewed need for local community, more of "we" and less "me", "me", "me".
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And of course, there is online technology
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which enables trust between strangers
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and matches supply and demand with an efficiency never before encountered in history.
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These are all important factors to explain the growth of the sharing economy.
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But I believe there's more to the power of sharing.
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Even when the economy picks up,
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and hopefully the planet is saved,
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sharing will still be big.
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There's a count...there's a psychology behind sharing that so counter-intuitive we tend to forget.
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Are you ready?
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Sharing makes you happy.
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The mere act of sharing can really brighten your day.
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In the case of our home cooks,
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being able to contribute something meaningful to someone else by sharing your passion for cooking
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the satisfaction you get from all the thank-yous
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the unexpected meetings of new people
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and of course for our foodies being able to eat the delicious meal without having to cook yourself.
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One of our cooks home cooks, Kim, sent me an email.
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She says, "Sharing food guarantees a positive day."
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I cook for my neighbors once a week
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and I now even beforehand that that evening I will go to bed feeling happy.
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Or Stefan, another home cook.
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He says, "when neighbors come for their food, my kids, Jano and Luka,
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can't wait to open the door and invite the neighbors into our kitchen."'
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I'm very proud of my kids when I see how much they enjoy being hospitable towards our neighbors.
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And then there is Elana
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a Russian home cook
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living in the Netherlands for thirteen years.
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She says to me, for the first time I feel at home here
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because I can contribute to community
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and get to know people living in my neighborhood.
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She was able to reduce her antidepressant of her cooking for neighbors for only two months.
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Woh, talk about the power of sharing.
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Sharing makes you happy.
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I will go one step further.
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Even "thinking" about sharing makes you happy.
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Well thinking about sharing,
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the reward system center in your brain's activated
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and the lovely chemical dopamine is released
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the same stuff your body creates when you are having sex.
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So, if we all spend the next minute thinking about all the things that we will share this coming week
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and it can be everything
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we will all leave this room with a big smile on our faces
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Thank you very much.