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We decided to pay some water bills.
我们决定付一些水费。
To do that, I skipped work that day.
为此，我那天翘了班。
I did not go to work that day.
那天我没有去上班。
And instead, I spent a few hours digging around on the water company's website.
相反，我花了几个小时在这家水务公司的网站上搜索。
And I found something interesting that sort of jump-started what to do for people.
发现了一些有趣的事情，让我能为他们做些什么。
For some reason, there was a 400-page PDF of customers on the website
出于某种原因，网站上有一份400页的客户PDF文件，
that the water company couldn't deliver their bills to through the mail, and some of these were delinquent accounts.
水务公司无法通过邮件将账单交给他们，其中一些是逾期账户。
But one of the things that was interesting about this list is that it also included account numbers for people.
但有趣的是，这个列表还包括了人们的账号。
So you just take one of those account numbers and, at that time,
所以你只要取其中一个账号，
plug it into the website and see everything about that account.
把它录入网站，就能看到关于这个账号的所有信息。
So I did that.
所以我就这么做了。
And one of the things that was interesting, though, there, was that I saw a "make a payment" button.
有趣的是，在那里，我看到了一个“付款”按钮。
So the idea then became,
所以我们的想法就变成了，
what if we got the account numbers of people that needed help and then made payments for them?
如果得到需要帮助的人的账号，然后为他们付款会怎样呢?
So a few hours later, I built a website to find those people and start connecting them to people that needed help.
几个小时后，我建立了一个网站来寻找这些人，并开始将他们与需要帮助的人联系起来。
And then I tweeted that.
然后我就发了推特。
And to keep things simple, people who wanted to help simply would get instructions on how to log onto the utility's website
万事从简，那些想要提供帮助的人会得到如何登录公用事业公司网站的说明，
as if they were the account holder and just make payments.
就像他们是本人一样，只需付款。
And then once they had done that, they would send us the receipts
一旦付完款，他们就会把收据寄给我们，
and we would send those to the families that had gotten the help.
我们会把收据寄给那些得到帮助的家庭。
And empowered with those donations, with those payments,
有了这些捐献，有了这些付款，
they were able to go to the water company and advocate for themselves and demand that their water be turned back on.
他们可以去自来水公司为自己辩护，要求恢复供水。
And in doing that, that's how, in the first 40 or so days of doing this,
在这过程中，最初的40天里，
we paid over 100,000 dollars in water bills by just simply -- Thank you.
我们支付了超过10万美元的水费仅仅是通过——谢谢。
By just simply sending people directly to the utility company's website to pay five dollars, 10 dollars.
仅仅是通过让人们直接到公司网站上支付5美元或10美元。
Whatever they could afford.
只要他们能负担得起。
And I don't say that to brag, but instead to encourage you all to notice problems
我这么说并不是吹牛，而是鼓励大家注意问题，
and to think about what is the simplest, most obvious thing you can do to impact that problem.
并思考如何用最简单，最直接的方法来解决问题。
So first, what I’ll also say that was true for us,
首先，我必须说明有一点是正确的，
is that it should be abundantly clear that whatever you do doesn't actually have to be perfect.
那就是无论你做什么都不需要做到完美。
You don't have to do some big overarching thing like a nonprofit.
你不需要做一些像非营利组织那样的大事情。
Because you won’t have all the answers when you start.
因为当你开始的时候，你不可能知道所有的答案。
But what's beautiful about that is that you don't actually need to have all the answers to get started.
但有一点很美妙，你实际不需要一开始就拥有所有的答案。
And I will confess that if we had had all the answers,
我要承认，如果知道所有的答案，
if we had known too much, we might not have actually gotten started.
如果我们知道的太多，可能根本不会真正行动。
