Thursday, August 7, 2008

Helping Change Lives.

Giving back is so rewarding.

Take Dave here: a 40 year old silicon valley high tech professional, working in Corporate Development / Mergers & Acquisitions, and running/building technology startups. He took 10 months off from work to pursue his dream of changing lives by giving back to the world community. His goal is to build 35 permanent houses in Colombia for victims of the violence in order to take as many as 200 displaced people off the street for the rest of their lives and keep an untold number of kids out of a life of prostitution and sexual exploitation.

He considered himself to be pretty lucky (his words) to be born in a part of the world where opportunity and prosperity abounds. He did pretty good in life so far, so he felt it would be the right thing to do, to give back something.
His goal to raise $150,000 to build the houses has long been passed. Last check in he has raised close to $200,000.
A simple twenty dollar donation hires a plumber or electrician for the day to help him in his quest to build these 35 homes.

Pretty simple.

Easy to do.

Do what you can, then do the best you can to make us better.

David

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck with your new blog, David.

I hope it does all you want it to.

contemporary themes said...

That's amazing. I work really hard with my students to teach them to give back to the community. Last year, we found and fed five families fully cooked, hot meals for Thanksgiving and delivered them. It was a small gesture but life-changing for my students. They then wanted to adopt five more families for Christmas.

I love your focus for this blog. You inspire me to be a better person and to DO more to advocate for others.

Kim said...

I have been taking a break from my computer this summer while trying to simplify my life in so many ways, so I just found your new address today. Like you, I've been thinking a lot about how I can make an impact on the world. I realize I'm never going to have a lot of money, and so what I can do to help those I'd like to help seems almost impossible. Recently I was inspired by the book Three Cups of Tea. The guy chose homelessness while raising money to build a school for children in Pakistan. The thing is, we don't have to give up work for a year or be homeless while saving money. If we all did just a little, collectively we'd have a huge impact in the world. I gave up meat over a year ago, because I believe we can feed the planet's hungry more effectively if we weren't feeding farm animals for slaughter. I am also in the process of joining a local organization that disperses food to the poor. I spent many years working with children through PTA programs and scouting, teaching children the benefits of community service. That decade was probably one of the most rewarding periods of my life.

Sorry for leaving such a long comment. Like la la, I love the focus of your new blog.

Good luck going bi, David. :-)