The Shoestring Philanthropist | Parade.com

The Shoestring Philanthropist | Parade.com

’Tis the season to give, and few people embody the spirit of altruism better than Marc Gold. For 22 years, he has trekked through Asia handing out money to the needy in small amounts, as little as 50 cents and rarely exceeding $500. But even though the dollar figures are small, the impact is big. In Vietnam, a modest donation was enough for a widow to buy a sewing machine and start a business. In Aceh, Indonesia, a fisherman fixed his boat and returned to self-sufficiency.

Compared with global aid organizations and their billion-dollar budgets, Gold’s operation is tiny, but by his own estimate, he has touched over 50,000 lives. An energetic cross between Santa Claus and Johnny Appleseed, Gold, 61, spends four months a year raising funds in friends’ living rooms and the rest on the road finding more individuals to help.

In 1989, while touring India, Gold met Thinlay, a Tibetan refugee, who invited him to his home. Thinlay’s wife, Tsering, welcomed him but kept holding her ears—she was suffering from a painful, deadly infection. Gold found her a physician and bought the antibiotic she needed. It cost just $1—and saved Tsering’s life. Then Gold spent $35 on a hearing aid so she could return to work and her son could go to school. “When I pressed the switch to turn on the hearing aid, her burst of joy burned into my brain,” Gold recalls. “I was thunderstruck, realizing I could restore her hearing for a relative pittance. I thought you had to be wealthy to do such things.”

Returning to the U.S. with a new sense of purpose, Gold wrote to 100 friends, hoping to raise $200 to give away on his next trip. He raised $2000. Today, his donors—through his nonprofit, 100 Friends—exceed 4000. But outside of keeping them informed with a newsletter, he sends no mass mailings and has no paid employees. His mantra is simple: “You give it to me, and I give it to them.”

Five years ago, Gold pared down his belongings to a few duffel bags and boxes. Formerly a teacher in San Francisco, he works out of a Bangkok hotel room and lives off retirement savings and a modest pension. He keeps his expenses—which may include hiring a translator or a van to deliver, for instance, the tools to help a young man open a bike-repair shop—low.

When he meets someone, Gold sits down to chat and maybe shares a cup of tea. Mostly, he listens. He has a knack for spotting people who aren’t on the radar of the large aid groups. One day in Kolkata, India, a rickshaw ferrying Gold broke down, and the driver wept. An interpreter explained that the vehicle was the man’s livelihood and home. Gold paid a mechanic $40 to repair the rickshaw and requested that the driver use it once a month to transport others in need. In Gyantse, Tibet, he saw a girl struggling with a large cart, which held her paralyzed mother. Thanks to him, the mother has a wheelchair and the daughter goes to school.

“Someone once asked me if I was playing God,” Gold says. “The people I help don’t ask questions like that. They only know a stranger is willing to help them.”

While Gold has helped pay for the building of some schools and libraries, the bulk of his giving is small. Rather than expand, he encourages others to become shoestring philanthropists, sharing his experiences and contacts and often giving them their first $100. Arlene Butler, a social worker and minister from Cape Charles, Va., heard about his work in 2006. “I’d saved $300, so I called Marc and asked if he’d help me give it away,” she recalls. Instead, he gave her advice, so she sent out e-mails seeking donations, netting $3000. That year, she went to Thailand and gave the money to sick children. “Now our kids are involved in our philanthropic travel. In Panama, we helped fund the education program of a tribe in the jungle,” Butler says. “It changes you inside when you have a chance to do these things.”

Three More Shoestring Philanthropists
A passion for travel and a growing awareness of global poverty have drawn other Americans to the kind of micro-philanthropy practiced by Marc Gold and 100 Friends. Here are three people who've been influenced by Gold and how they're choosing to give back:

A Fulbright Scholar with degrees in cultural anthropology and international relations, Adam Carter decided to create his own nonprofit after becoming disillusioned with the bureaucracy of large international development agencies. He says, "Marc Gold's lifestyle shined like a beacon for me – here was a guy who carved out this incredible existence, helping so many people yet having an amazing time in the process." Gold mentored Carter on fundraising and methodology, shared his contacts, and donated the first $100 to Carter's new nonprofit, Cause & Affect Foundation. Now Carter, 36, backpacks from village to village through Africa, Latin America, and South America: "I treasure the personal connection to folks on the ground, that immediate contact with people in need. My previous experience was great but I didn't want to be a tiny cog in a gigantic wheel." The best advice he received from Gold? "Don't feel overwhelmed. If you only help one single person you've made the world a better place. Start there." Carter's video shows an exuberant humanitarian equally at home in dirt villages and in the Brazilian slums. His group has brought wheelchairs to amputees ("Once you're mobile you can earn a living") and funded six-person factories and workshops. "By immersing ourselves in the local culture, we seek out the best hands-on way to help local leaders improve their communities, while giving people a chance to climb out of poverty and improve their own lives," he explains. Every summer in Chicago, Carter also mentors inner-city boys from the most violent neighborhoods, and he earns his travel expenses by working as a beer vendor at Wrigley Field. He is currently pursuing humanitarian efforts in his favorite country, Brazil. (www.causeandaffectfoundation.org)

Thanks to Atlanta's Dwight Turner, volunteering in Bangkok is simple. Located in the storied Thai capital, his nonprofit offers travelers a chance to participate in short-term volunteering--and people can even sign up online even before they leave on their trips. Volunteer assignments may include a morning spent teaching English at a school for the blind or visiting families segregated in immigration centers. Turner, 26, went to teach English in Thailand in 2006 but found himself staying on in the country afterwards. Like Adam Carter, he is a generation younger than Marc Gold. He says, "I was inspired by what Marc was doing. I loved his idea that it doesn't take huge organizations to make a difference." He credits Gold with "pushing me to step out and do things on my own," and started his organization with the assistance of Gold and his extensive contacts. "That was important because he has quality information about small grassroots projects that you can only know by going there." Turner's group is called In Search of Sanuk (ISOS) -- "sanuk" is Thai for ‘ fun' -- and Turner dubs his vision "funlanthropy," declaring, "While alleviating the ills of urban poverty in Bangkok, we invite you to make new friends and have fun helping others." Travelers can find ISOS through Facebook and Twitter. Last year, Turner worked with more than 200 volunteers. (www.insearchofsanuk.com/volunteer)

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"My dream is to put orphanages on the big tourist map," says Ryan Anderson, 34, who like Turner, is also turning travelers into temporary volunteers. "People come through Cambodia to go see the temples of Angkor Wat. Then, when they see our posters, they decide to visit us too. Tourists like lending a hand, especially to kids." After graduating from Loyola University in 1999, Anderson backpacked throughout Asia, volunteering in Nepal and opening a Mexican restaurant in Thailand. He eventually chose to focus on several Cambodian orphanages for his philanthropic efforts and started the nonprofit Hands on Helping, saying: "I wanted to do more than walk orphans to school and make sure they brushed their teeth. I realized I could start a small, fun charity that would bring me to amazing destinations and let me improve the lives of unfortunate children." What drew him to Marc Gold? "Marc's excitement and energy, how he adds fun to what he does. He's tech savvy; his newsletters for donors are prompt and accurate. And he goes to beautiful, remote areas of the world that often are ignored." Anderson adds, "One thing I especially love is his knack for odd, ‘big-small' gestures. I've put my own spin on it. It could be simple, like buying all the fruit from an old lady at the market and giving it to the orphanage so she can take a day off and stay with her family." Anderson -- who goes by the nickname "Ando" -- would someday like to devote himself full-time to micro-philanthropy. For now, he supports himself by running a boat-cleaning service business in Chicago during the warmer months. (www.handsonhelping.org)

Finding The Silver Lining | Parade.com

Finding The Silver Lining | Parade.com

Author Mitch Albom with Pastor Henry Covington in Detroit.

Editor's Note: Find out how you can help faith groups make repairs at a Hole in the Roof Foundation.

Rain falls on the church roof. It pours through a gaping hole and splashes onto the pews. Against the plop, plop, plop of gathering water, a pastor urges nearly 100 weary men to believe in the future. They wear old jackets or sweatshirts. They line up for chili and cornbread. They sleep on the floor, atop vinyl mattresses.

“Enjoy the meal,” the pastor tells them as they line up. “There’s a place for you here. See that man for a blanket…”

I HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN THIS STORY SINCE I READ IT. TODAY, GMA DID A SPECIAL FOLLOW UP AND THE CHURCH GOT A NEW ROOF FROM THE COMMUNITY. READ ON FOR MORE INFO

Just as the first major winter storm bears down on Detroit, acts of faith -- and author Mitch Albom's newest best seller, Have a Little Faith -- have added up to put a new roof on a crumbling downtown church that serves and shelters the homeless.

The $85,000 repair is set to be unveiled today, snow or no snow. The plan is for a joyful ceremonial removal of a great blue tarp placed where there was once a huge hole that left the church so cold people routinely prayed with their coats on. The funds came from "A Hole in the Roof Foundation" established by Albom to support churches that serve cities' poorest people can't use government money for capital repairs.

Albom, who has devoted the proceeds of earlier books such as Tuesdays with Morrie, to fund programs in the recession-shattered city, launched Have a Little Faith, a little book describing the commitment to good works of two clergyman. One was his childhood rabbi, the late Albert Lewis. The other was Henry Covington, spiritual leader of Pilgrim Church and a ministry to the homeless. A portion of the funds from book launch events went to kick off the foundation.

Detroit author Mitch Albom's newest book,
CAPTION
By Santa Fabio, for USA TODAY
Albom says people nationwide responded with donations from $7 -- enough to buy a roof shingle through a Twitter campaign called "Shinglebells" -- to $10,000 from a church in California.

Ten days ago, we had 100 volunteers, including the homeless people who sleep at the church, out here forming a big human line when the trucks pulled up with the supplies.

We unloaded the shingles and nails and handed the supplies up to the ladder to the professionals on the roof. Then, on the count of three, they pulled off the tarps.

Today, on the count of three, they'll do it again. They'll also unveil a plaque inside the church, replastered and repainted where the biggest hole once let rain fall in. It lists about 400 names.

The ceremony will include the church choir, singer Anita Baker and the Detroit mayor all there to celebrate the faith of strangers in a city church. Albom says there's still money coming into the Hole in the Roof fund and soon they'll pick a new church to repair.

This is my hometown, Detroit, in a devastated economy, in a crumbling church, on a cold, hard floor at the bottom of the world.

And still, there is hope.

If there is any advantage to living at the epicenter of the economic crisis, where our main industry—the auto business—has imploded, where abandoned houses seem to dot every corner, where the unemployment rate is a staggering 25%, it is this: You get to see what man is made of.

What I have seen is that man is made of tough stuff. Man can rise to the occasion. One such man is the pastor of this church. His name is Henry Covington. Thirty years ago, he was in prison. He’d been a drug dealer, a drug abuser, a thief, and an armed robber. He had every excuse to see the world as hopeless.

But on a night when he truly hit bottom, hiding behind trash cans, certain he would be murdered by angry drug dealers, he promised his life to God if he lived to the morning.

He lived.

He kept his promise.

These days, Pastor Covington, 52, runs the I Am My Brother’s Keeper Ministries in downtown Detroit. His huge brick building was once—more than a century ago—the largest Presbyterian church in the upper Midwest. Now, like much of Detroit, it’s been overgrown with poverty, and there are broken windows and a hole in the sanctuary roof through which the rainwater collects in buckets. Several times, this ministry has been close to folding. Local drug lords even offered the pastor money to let them use the church for their dealings.

But Henry Covington was done with that life.

Instead, he dug in. He found a way. Today, he conducts services through the cold, through the snow, even under a giant plastic tent when the gas company shuts the heat off due to unpaid bills. He takes little salary and lives with his family in a tiny, nearby home.

And yet, he says, “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”

What he means is that he is where he can make a difference. In that way, Covington is typical of many people in this economy who find new meaning in their lives despite losing jobs, homes, or status: They find it by giving to others and reconnecting with their faith.

In Detroit, we call it fighting back.

A few years ago, I spent a night at a local homeless shelter to write about the experience. As I stood in line for food, a man tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was who he thought I was. I told him yes.

“So,” he said, nodding sympathetically, “what happened to you?”

I never forgot that. I realized hard times can hit anyone. Now, all around our country, it is being proven true. With the mortgage crisis and the recession, even rural states like Wyoming and Montana have seen jumps in their unemployed and homeless populations. In Detroit, nearly half of the homeless are families, and more than half of those are on the streets for the first time.