Michael Wesch, an anthropology professor at Kansas State University who studies YouTube with his students, celebrates the capacity of user generated content to express cultural values that the marketplace is largely ignoring. Love and generosity, tolerance and empathy, the essential interdependency of human beings – these are not qualities that commercial media give priority to, he says, and that’s why they get articulated online.

Filmmaker Woody Allen famously observed that 80% of success is showing up. So individuals and organizations committed to nurturing human connection, promoting inclusiveness and celebrating the gifts we all have to contribute to one another, need to show up online.

PLAN Institute's exciting new initiative, Tyze, offers a dramatic illustration of what’s possible when new media technologies are married to positive social values. When we embrace and exploit online communications to spread messages of hope and resilience, of love and laughter, we get to harness the virtual world in aide of making the real one a better place for everyone – the connected and disconnected alike.