Busboys & Poets at 14th and V Streets (photo: Reed)
I decided to go over and grab dinner at Busboys and Poets and see if I could talk with someone about holding my year-end celebration there. They gave me the name of a person to talk to and I followed up later via email. Coincidentally today someone called me back from their organization. They were not interested in hosting the event unless I was going to pay a five-figure amount which is simply not possible and completely outside of the spirit of the Year of Giving. So, if you know of a good venue in Washington, DC that can hold 200+ people and would like a ton of in-kind national and local media, let me know.
Chavon paid her $10 forward. (photo: Reed)
While I was eating I met the person sitting to my right: Chavon. A foster care case worker by day, she was enjoying a respite with friends after a long stressful week. She works with a total of seven kids right now; two of which are siblings. She tells me about each one of them; their ages: 5, 6, 7, 13, 17, 18 and 19. “It’s hard work,” she says exhaling. “But you have to also let people go through their own journey.”
Busboys & Poets gets its name from American poet Langston Hughes. (photo: Reed)
She says she has always been a person naturally oriented to help others. “It’s a passion,” she says with a smile. “You know, every time someone gives you something – even a dollar – it means something.
She says that she has given each one of her kids a notebook that they are to write down things that she tasks them with. “I have to stay on top of them,” she tells me with a slightly more disciplinarian demeanor. “I think that I will see how each one does on their assignments for next week and I’m going to give the $10 to the one who makes the most progress.”
Her two friends that were with her, Carla and Marques, spoke very highly of their friend. “She is a good listener and she’s very honest, brutally honest,” Carla says. Her friend Marques called her “hilarious” and said that she was also very sensitive.
As I left Chavon put a smile on my face when she said, “Reed, this has made my day!”
"Every time somebody gives you something - even a dollar - it means something." - Chavon (photo: Reed)
On Wednesday I got a note from Chavon saying that she had given the $10 to a new client of hers: a 13-year-old girl. “She was very respectful and compliant with the things I tasked her with,” she wrote in her email. “She was able to purchase her own breakfast without having to depend on anyone else.” Getting her email made my day. Thanks Chavon!
This Sunday is the 10th of October. Inspired by the Year of Giving, a guy named Howard Wu created an event, Give a Stranger 10 Bucks Day. Howard thought that the perfect day to do this would be October 10th since it is 10/10/10. Why not join me and Howard and give $10 away this Sunday. 
“I started panhandling about a month and a half ago,” Ernest tells me. “I was working on and off for a moving truck company.” Now he stands on the corner of Lee Highway and Fairfax Road holding a sign that says, “I am homeless. Does it hurt to give to someone in need. Please help me if you can? God bless.”
“I’m not learning too much out here,” he confesses as a pick-up truck whizzes by him pushing him up against the guard rail. “You get all kinds of people out here.” A lot of people show him compassion and offer him some help, but others taunt him. “You know some guys say stuff like, ‘Hey man you look healthy…get a job!’ I’m like, at least give me a smile or a wave or something.”
Year of Giving 