Giving from the heart

I want to share a story I heard last week. It really made me think about what it means to be truly generous.

A colleague of mine (Steve Peifer) whom I met during a college visit to Boston, happens to work in Kenya. He helps kids get into colleges all over the world. The poverty these students live in is remarkable. A few years back, he started raising funds to provide lunch for the kids attending 1 school because if students get fed, they're more likely to keep coming to school because it will likely be the only meal they get.

It only costs $30 a day to feed 600 students Today, because of donations, Steve is able to provide daily lunch for 20 schools. When he delivers the food, he makes sure everyone in the community knows he has delivered enough food for a month. That way it can't "disappear" without everyone noticing and someone being held accountable.

Anyway, right now Kenya is in the midst of a severe drought, so food is even more scarce than usual. When my colleague went to check on one of the schools, which has had food "disappear" in the past, he discovered that they were going to be 9 days short of food for the month. Suspecting that someone had possibly profited from the missing food, he made some inquiries.

What he discovered was that the school community had decided to give up 10% of their food to 2 schools which aren't part of the program so those children would also have some food.