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Posts Tagged ‘youth’

Day 48 – Griffin

Posted in Savings, tagged , , , , , on March 5, 2011| 3 Comments »

Blog post by Maria D., a Kindness Investor from Washington, DC.

 

Say hello to the ambitious and thrifty Griffin!  He’s a young New Yorker who has called Long Island his home for eleven years of life. I got the chance to meet him while down at my Aunt’s local library and decided, why not give the $10 to a young person. Children are our future, right?? So with his mom’s approval, of course, I told Griffin about Reed’s Year of Giving, what it stands for and asked him if he’d be my recipient of the day.
Right off the bat it was clear that Griffin has a value for money and that it is important to him to save for a rainy day.  His parents have a family owned business that he hopes to be part of in the future.  As such, he decided to save the money by putting it into the bank.  “It’s important to me to put the money away so I can have money for the future.”
Griffin’s family also engages in philanthropic activities and fundraising is another value that has been instilled in him.  “When we’re making money, then we can help other people too.  That’s something my parents tell me is important to do.”
And there you have it, folks – he’s young, wise, and looking to do good in his adult years.  Good luck Griffin!

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Day 36 – Kathleen

Posted in Donation, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 10, 2011| 2 Comments »

-Blog post by Traci, a Kindness Investor traveling in Thailand.

Picture from Big Heart Project in Cambodia

While on a bus from Bangkok to Siem Reap, I met a young woman named Kathleen from Australia.  She was a fundraiser for an organization called Big Heart Project.  The purpose of their existence is to identify communities and individuals who are living in conditions where basic necessities are scarce, opportunities are limited and many freedoms are inhibited, they then dedicate their time to educate these communities in a holistic way.  The main focus is to prevent children from entering prostitution and situations of slavery and abuse in the first place.  Where they can, they also rescue, rehabilitate, care for and educate girls leaving child prostitution and sexual slavery.

I gave my daily gift to Kathleen who had come to Cambodia to deliver funds that she had collected for the purpose of purchasing land and building an orphanage in Phnom Penh.  They need about $13,000.00 USD for the land and another $20,000 for the building.  Hopefully my gift helped her meet her goal in some small way.

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Day 232 – Cierra M. & Shaquan D.

Posted in Gave the money to someone else, Refusals, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2010| 3 Comments »

I met a friend for lunch over near Union Station and then decided to walk back home. It’s about 30 blocks so I knew I would find somebody! I stopped by So Others Might Eat (SOME) and picked up some information and then kept on snaking my way over to Dupont Circle. I came across a nice guy who was originally from Mexico out walking a couple of dogs. He took my card but said he preferred that I find someone else…so on I went.

 

Tent City DC at Parcel 42 (photo: Reed)

I decided to stop by Tent City DC.  When I arrived at the abandoned lot at 7th and R Streets I didn’t find anyone there.  I walked around, yelled “hello, anybody home” but no voices came from any of the tents. Just then two young girls yelled over to me from outside the fenced in area where I was standing. “Hey, why are you guys staying in these tents?” I walked over and explained to them that I was not one of the people staying in the tents, but that they were protesting the fact that Parcel 42 was being earmarked for development into luxury condos instead of affordable housing like what was promised by the mayor’s office a few years ago.

I told them about my project and asked if I could give them my $10 for the day.

Shaquan and Cierra next to Tent City DC in the Shaw neighborhood (photo: Reed)

 Cierra is 17 and Shaquan is almost 16.  They are high school students who are working this summer at a youth camp.  They are also two of the 463,000 children living in foster care in the US.

Shaquan has been in the system since she was three and has been in and out of group homes and families all of her life. “The system has got a lot of problems,” Shaquan says. “Every time you go to a new place you got to go through the whole screening process again.” Cierra has only been in foster care for about five years but even in that relatively short amount of time she has been shuffled between 6-8 families. Right now they are both living with Cierra’s sister for the summer, but soon they will go back to a foster family or group house.

They say that some foster families are only in it for the money. “They get a lot of money from the government and we don’t see any of it,” according to Shaquan. I played devil’s advocate a little and reminded them that the families also have a lot of costs that they may not see directly. The agreed that that was probably true, but they still felt like there were some inequities there.

I was deeply sadden as I talked to these smart, articulate young women. They have been forced to grow up much faster than others. They have felt unloved and unwanted at times and suffered through the pain that accompanies those emotions. “It’s hard,” Shaquan starts to say, “I used to blame other people for my actions, but I can’t blame nobody but myself. You got to keep your head up!” She went on to say that she was adopted by a family years ago and she “messed it all up.” She was referring to a woman named Ms. Theresa. I learned that in addition to adopting Shaquan, Ms. Theresa had also opened her home to Cierra. “Man, I wish I was back there now. I didn’t know how good I had it, but I messed up again,” Shaquan says.

I asked them what they were going to do with the $5 that each of them had in their hand. “Probably give it to someone else,” they said. “If I see a homeless person and I got money in my pocket, I give something,” Shaquan says.

photo: Reed

This was one of those days that I couldn’t stop thinking about the people who I had met for a long time after the goodbyes. Both of these girls have so much to offer the world. They are smart. They are charismatic. They are strong yet sensitive and thoughtful at the same time. They are beautiful young women who have not had the easiest path to get to where they are today and admitted to having made some poor choices themselves. What impressed me most was their attitude. They could have said “poor me, why me?” But they didn’t. They accepted responsibility for their actions and their lives and were living in the present making the best out of the cards that they have been dealt.  Keep your head up!

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Day 143 – Will J.

Posted in Food & Beverage, Gave the money to someone else, tagged , , , , , , on May 11, 2010| 6 Comments »

Thanks to all of those who have become Facebook Fans and especially those who have signed up to give on June 15th, the Worldwide Day of Giving.  So far there are only a little over 300 people who have committed to giving in their own community on June 15th…so pass the word along.  My goal is to get 10,000 people around the world to do this and then have them share their experiences, pictures, etc. here with the rest of the world.  It should be amazing, but I need your help to make it happen!

Will and Matthew (Photo: Reed)

Last Thursday I found Will with his skateboard at the north end of Dupont Circle.  Will is an 18-year-old who lives in the Fort Totten area.  He was reluctant to accept my $10 because he felt there were others who were more deserving of the money, but then he decided to accept it and pass the money on.

He describes himself as a “furry artist, tattoo apprentice, capoeira student, skateboarder, traceur (person who performs parkour), film editor, and musician.”  I have to say that I felt like a huge under-achiever after learning all about his interests.  I had never even heard of parkour for example.  It is a non-competitive, physical discipline of French origin in which participants run along a route, attempting to negotiate obstacles in the most efficient way possible.  

Will said that he was going to give $5 to his mom who “could really use the money right now.”  He is going to break the other $5 into singles and give out a $1 to 5 random people.  I asked him if there was anything that people reading the blog could do to help him.  He shook his head “no” and said, “I feel that I can give more than I can receive.”  I definitely understand his thinking.

About this time, Will’s friend Matthew came along.  Matthew and Will met at the same capoeira training center.  They both share a lot of the same interests.  Matthew also trains in Japanese sword play and Japanese staff fighting.

Here is a small portion of our conversation.

If you would like to check out some of Will’s artwork, click here.

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Day 135 – Duke Ellington School of the Arts 9th Graders

Posted in Something for themself, tagged , , , , , , , on May 3, 2010| 5 Comments »

Last Wednesday I met up with Danny Harris, the creative mind behind The People’s District blog who I met on Day 64.  If you haven’t checked out Danny’s website, please do.  I love it. 

Duke Ellington School of the Arts (Photo: Reed)

Anyway, we just met up to have a coffee and share some conversation.  At some point, Danny looked at me and asked, “What are you doing this afternoon?” In the spirit of unemployment, I responded that I was pretty busy but that I might be able to squeeze something in.  I asked him what he had in mind and he shared that he was teaching a Media and Communications course at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in the afternoons and asked if I would be a special guest in one of the classes.  I happily accepted the invitation. 

Danny picked me up on his scooter around 1:30.  Yep, I was strapped on the back of his scooter heading through Upper Georgetown.  Thank goodness nobody caught a picture of me looking ridiculous trying to figure out where to put my hands and feet.

The school is very different than the school that I attended.  Students seemed to be treated much more like adults.  The far wall was covered in books.  The chairs were set up in the shape of a circle.  The room itself was rather different.  Picture a room that has an opening to another room on one side and along the other side a wall that didn’t go all the way to the ceiling allowing discussion in the adjacent room to be heard. 

(Photo: Reed)

The ninth graders started trickling in and several came in and politely introduced themselves to me.  

Danny started his class and later introduced me.  I took a ten dollar bill out of my Moleskine notebook and showed it to the class and asked, “What would you do if I gave you $10.”  Ideas started spewing forth, but most of the ideas were focused on what they would buy for themselves.  Then I asked, “What about doing something for someone else?”  Most students then started brainstorming ideas that involved others, many of the ideas focused on how to help a teacher at the school who recently suffered a miscarriage.  It was amazing to see these young minds at work.  Sure there were the occasional moments of pure chaos, but mostly it was controlled chaos.

Danny and I posed several questions like:

“Does it matter what the person does with the money?”

“Does the giver’s intentions matter?”

“How would you feel if you gave money to someone who said they needed it and you later found out they had lied about their situation and didn’t really need the money as much as they said they did?”

“When you give, do you make any conditions on your kindness or do you do it unconditionally?”

The debate was fantastic. 

9th Grade Media & Communications Class (Photo: Reed)

The time seemed to fly by and we were getting very close to the end of the class and the sound of the bell signaling the change of class.  I told the students that I was going to give my $10 to them as a group and they had to agree on what to do with it.  There was no shortage of ideas.  Many of them involved helping the aforementioned teacher, others involved raising money for various causes.  They settled on the idea of using my $10 as the foundation of a fund that they would themselves contribute to in order to host an open mic night to raise money for their class.  

This was an amazing opportunity to interact with the students.  I hope that they consider doing something on June 15th as part of the Worldwide Day of Giving and share their experiences here with all of us.

I walked home, it’s about a mile or two.  On the way home I started getting really sick.  It was the beginning of a 36 hour stomach flu that wiped me out last week.  I have since fully recovered!

Tonight I am doing an interview with a Korean radio station…should be interesting!  I will let you know how it goes.

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