Already described earlier as Value Added to Society, but rewritten because of TEDxDelft.

We all want to help, but ‘how’ is mostly an issue. That’s why we like to introduce:

VAS, Value Added to Schools

VAT (Value Added Tax) we all know: it helps the great community you are part of with everything we need in order to be a working society with good infrastructure, heath care, etc. You can think of it as mandatory crowd funding. The first two words are nice — adding value, but we hate paying tax. VAS is not a tax. It is doing your bit to help a school close by. It’s a voluntary crowd funding idea. Where you can give your personal added value to other young people. Your skills, your knowledge, your time, your network or you can support initiatives financially.

Why
It is no news anymore that how we live and use the planet we live on can’t continue. Yes, we all have the best possible intentions and yes, we all want the best for ourselves, our children, etc. but it should not really interfere with our personal interests. Some people think differently and they deserve a big applause, but most of us don’t. We live in a world that is based on continuous growth. Where ‘profit’ is news when companies make it, while ‘benefit’ should be what it is all about. So we would like to introduce two different percentages of VAS:

6%, donation in money
19%, percentage of time to use to help somebody or a good cause

Why these percentages? We’ve borrowed them from the Dutch Tax Office. That 6% is a low enough percentage to directly feel in hard cash. And that 19% is a day a week or how you want to plan it — and can borrow its success from the Google 20% (as a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google’s newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors).

If you would reserve 6% from all the work that you do, at the end of the year you would have a nice budget to organize something nice where you can include students, the neighborhood, your network an more. And a large sum of it will also be tax deductible. So you save tax and add value locally. Or, you could use a bit of time, a day in a week. An hour a day. Does not need to be a lot. But that can make a big difference. Have a look at the talk of Dave Eggers at TED to see how having fun, spending little amounts of time can make a massive impact in education.