“Lily Cole was back to her old university stomping ground last night to debate at the Cambridge Union. The motion, ‘This House Believes a Society of Giving is Impossible’, saw Cole join forces with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, feminist and philanthropist Genevieve Vaughan and the current director of the Behaviour Insights Team at Number 10, David Halpern, in opposition – and win.
Cole, who this week launched an “altruistic social network” aptly named ‘Impossible’, argued that the experiences she most values in her life are based on a gift exchange rather than a monetary transaction. Speaking to an audience of Cambridge students taking a break from revision – whom she jokingly thanked for giving their time – she referred to her rumoured fortune of £11 million: “I’ve gone from being quite poor to being quite rich, but the experiences I value are based on an interaction of helping each other. When you give, you release chemicals – oxytosin – that make you happy. The act of giving is self-involved, it has enriched my life. But the more generous I’ve been, the more generous people have been to me.”
Read the entire article in the Telegraph here.
