You probably have heard the saying that goes like, "Give a person a fish and you will feed them for a day: Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime."
This special site features the stories of people whose ideas and organizations create new and sustainable markets and services that benefit underserved communities everywhere in the developing world. In a nutshell, these are stories about individuals whose ideas leap beyond charity to find systemic solutions to poverty, education, health and social justice.I particularly loved this story of Sabina and ex-microsoft employee. Sabina's benefactor is an American named John Wood, who started a literacy program called Room to Read.
"My first trip to Nepal was in 1998, when I had been working for Microsoft for seven years," Wood tells Cunningham. "I was burned out. I was working the 24/7, full-on commando lifestyle. Always being on call. Always being on email. And I wanted to get away."Like a lot of well-heeled, footloose Americans, he went on a trek in the mountains of Nepal, which he discovered was "not only a country of absolutely spectacular beauty but also a place of crushing poverty." Visiting a school, he noticed the rundown library was virtually empty. The headmaster proposed a solution: "Perhaps sir, you will someday come back with books."
Those words changed his life. Wood returned the following year with eight donkeys loaded with books, and when he saw how thrilled the children were, he vowed to quit Microsoft and become the Andrew Carnegie of Nepal.
Reading all these stories truly inspired, moved and touched me; I hope it will have a similar effect on you.
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