Whenever I guest lecture about multimedia storytelling, I stress the importance of having a personal project. This is a story or an essay that you do for yourself, not for an editor or a professor or a publication. You do it because you’re passionate about the topic, the person, the issue, the situation, because not creating this story would leave you always wondering, “Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I make time for that?” A personal project allows you to be more creative, inventive and risky than you might be with an assignment. It can be a fun story or heavy story. Either way, you do a personal project because you must, because you love it. That’s all.

This has been my personal project for the last year-and-a-half: The Penny Project, the story of Leslie Stein, a woman who picks up all the change she finds on the street. In three years she’s collected hundreds of dollars and started a change-collecting movement among her friends and family. Last year she started donating the change to an organization striving to make positive changes in the lives of young women in DC.

I love this story. More to come.

(Mind you, this is just a first rough cut of the story introduction. I’m pretty set on opening with the sound of change, but beyond that I’m still thinking. Feel free to leave me thoughts and suggestions in the comments section.)

Tonight I continued working on my story about Leslie, the woman who collects change she finds on the street. After more than two years of doing this, she’s got her search method down pat.

- Walk near parking meters, street curbs and bus stops; people are likely to drop change there and not have time to pick it up.
- When scanning dirt, look for something perfectly round since “nothing in nature is perfectly round,” she says.
- Be willing to step out in traffic but remember to watch for oncoming cars.

As a photographer I consider myself a fairly observant and aware person but I’m telling you, Leslie has hawk eyes. There were times she’d yelp in delight over spying a penny and I wouldn’t see it until she held it in her hand. Clearly, this is an acquired skill.

Leslie’s intake this evening: 32 cents. Plus, I found a penny, too! I have to admit I was pretty excited.

Leslie, an awesome woman I met when she modeled for a photo shoot I recently did, never passes up a penny. In fact, she tells me she can see them stuck at the bottom of street grates (more about that in a minute), melted into summer streets and buried in dirt. In December 2006, Leslie made a New Year’s resolution to pick up all the change she found lying around. She collected $76.80 in found money in 2007, $148.48 in 2008 and she’s up to $28.33 for 2009. She’s got friends and family giving her their found money for the penny project, as she calls it; sometimes they even text her when they find change in the street: QUARTER! When she tells strangers about her project, they remember; one man she met at a business conference recently mailed her a penny he found.

“This has changed the way I live my life,” she said. “When I’m going somewhere, I can take the bus…or I can walk and probably find pennies. To me, the application to real life is, how many small good things in your life are you overlooking?”

I love this attitude about life! Which is why I’ve started a story on Leslie and her pennies. She wants to use the money she collects to start a non-profit organization that teaches financial literacy to kids or helps military veterans (she’s a West Point graduate). We’re going to hang out again soon so I can witness her eagle eye for loose change. She told me she once crouched over a shallow street grate, chopsticks in hand, to fish out $1.83 she saw in there.

(P.S. The cat picture at the end has nothing do with this story. I just like the photograph!)