The coffee stand on Soi 34

There's a coffee stand on the corner of Sukhumvit Soi 34 in Bangkok. Ounjai and Jamnong run it, aged 73 and 81. They open at 4am every day, and they're working to pay down a debt.

We found them earlier this month and brought them supplies they were short on, so they'd have a few more products to sell. That was the whole plan. We filmed it too, and told their story on our social channels.

Hundreds of thousands of people watched the videos. Then strangers started asking how they could help. People who will never be in Bangkok and will never drink that coffee. So we went back with more support, because the community had answered.

That surprised me. I've been thinking about it since.

When I started Spirit Bright I thought the money was the work. Find good projects, fund them, move on. That's what we did the first year and it was fine. A playground. A chapel. A shelter for rescued cattle. A book. A pilgrimage.

But look at what actually happened this year.

We bought two cows out of the slaughterhouse. One was pregnant, so technically three. It cost about a thousand dollars. The video of it reached 250,000 people.

Last week we brought lunch to 101 students and staff at a school for blind children in Lopburi. The video of that day reached close to 300,000, telling these kids' stories, raising support for the school, and sharing positivity through compassionate action.

We brought Jean on full-time to document the work we were already doing. Air conditioners for a primary school, a playground in Cambodia, food for homeless people around Bangkok, or just helping someone on the street — the videos we shared reached more than a million people in four months.

I used to think of the filming as marketing, or even showboating. The thing you do afterward to get credit for the real work. I don't anymore. The story does its own work, and it reaches people a van full of supplies never will. Seeing acts of kindness, particularly between strangers, leaves a deep and remarkable impression on us. Witnessing compassion in action is contagious.

We called it Spirit Bright because that's the actual measure. Not dollars moved or projects completed, but how many people felt something lift, even for a minute. Content is how we begin to do it at scale.

So we changed how we operate. Smaller projects, closer to home, done in person with local volunteers, and documented in a careful, thoughtful way. Having Jean and Taniya on full-time is the real reason the pace picked up. Fifteen projects this year against five last year, and a community is growing around it.

The part I keep coming back to is that none of it took more money. The coffee stand cost less than almost anything we've ever supported. It just took showing up, and noticing two people everyone else walks past.

I'm grateful I get to do this. And grateful to have friends who find it worth reading about.

More soon.

Sam