Got some really cool news to share with you. Literally…cool and inspiring news.
I had the most surreal phone call while I was fishing in Nebraska during my vacation. A guy named Nicholas Kristof called. For those that don’t know, Kristof is one of my favorite writers and he’s also a two time Pulitzer winning columnist for the New York Times. He and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, are also the authors of a phenomenal book called Half the Sky. Somehow he had heard about our story and of One Day’s Wages and wanted to chat – without any promises – of a possible inclusion in a special feature he was writing for the New York Times Sunday Magazine.
That article, The D.I.Y. Foreign Aid Revolution, was published in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine.
Every time someone mentions or writes about our story, I feel the importance of trying to share how ODW was so much of a community thing. We are not an island to ourselves. So many have inspired, encouraged, and prayed for us.
And so, I again want to extend to my blog readers, friends, and larger community – sincere thanks for your prayers, support and encouragement.
Thank you.
Your prayers, belief, and generosity in helping “seed” the vision has allowed ODW to move forward. Amazingly, we were able to raise $71,797 (mostly through this blog) to help launch ODW. And as I’ve shared before, Minhee and I are
grateful and humbled by God’s grace and favor.
Read this article. I say this not because Minhee and I are amongst those featured in the article but because it’s simply a phenomenal article about courage, generosity, and about average folks – especially women – seeking to change the world. They are – per the title of the article – “doing it yourself.”
The grace in all this?
the best part of wanting to change the world is that you’ll get changed in the process.
The article includes numerous stories including the inspiring story of Maggie Doyne (pictured above):
Maggie Doyne began her philanthropic work in a remote and war-ravaged area of Nepal as a 19-year-old financed by her baby-sitting savings. Now, at age 23, she’s running an orphanage and a school for 220 students.
Let me caution you that it’s a very long article as it’s a “magazine essay” but it’s worth reading the entire thing and passing it on.
One thing I’d like to clarify in the article is that I don’t feel comfortable describing our time of subletting our home as being “homeless.” We chose to sublet our home in hopes of saving the necessary funds to honor our pledge. We also have plenty of friends and community that would have offered up their couches and extra rooms for us – as was the case. The majority of the “homeless” simply do not and we need to do more to support them but that’s another post (and a big project I’ll be sharing in the next few weeks).
Here’s the portion about our story from the article:
In Seattle, for example, a couple named Eugene and Minhee Cho are encouraging middle-class Americans to think of themselves as philanthropists, every bit as much as Bill Gates is. Eugene is a minister and Minhee a stay-at-home mom who looks after their three children but recently returned to grad school. They were moved by the suffering they’d seen around the world, but they weren’t well off and didn’t know what they could do to make a difference. Then Eugene happened to take a trip to Burma, visited a school and saw how tiny sums could keep children in class. “That kind of wrecked my life,” Eugene says, laughing.
After the trip, they resolved that for one year they would donate all their earnings — Eugene’s salary of $68,000 — to Burmese education and other charities to show that you don’t have to be a zillionaire to be generous. Later, they founded One Day’s Wages, which asks people to donate a single day’s pay — 0.4 percent of annual income — to various causes and organizations that they have vetted and put on their Web site. Forsaking a year’s salary was a romantic idea when the Chos conceived it, but life without paychecks turned out to be brutal, even humiliating. They exhausted their life’s savings, and Eugene sold his beloved car. With several months to go, they had to sublet their home and become homeless — taking their children and moving onto friends’ couches. “That was the most painful decision I’ve had to make as a father,” Eugene says.
The One Day’s Wages campaign has proved more practicable. In the past year, the Chos have raised more than $400,000, all of which will be forwarded to the organizations they work with. About 60 percent of the donors have been women or girls, they think, the youngest being a 6-year-old who gave up her birthday presents and started a birthday campaign on the onedayswages.org Web site. “The aim is to inspire the everyday person,” Eugene says, summing up the rise of do-it-yourself foreign aid. “We’re trying to communicate that you don’t have to be a rock star or a millionaire to make a difference.” [read full article]
