Friday, November 17, 2006

Shipping Houses

Today I worked went to Sisters of the Road Cafe--a great model of a nonprofit that bestows dignity to the homeless and poor. The way they do it is by having people work for their meals if they can't pay money--so if you work for fifteen minutes, you've earned a buck fifty credit, which is the cost of one meal. I worked for about an hour and fifteen minutes making plates of delicious--looking burritoes, and after that got to use a fraction of what I earned for a meal. I sat down across from a guy named Ray, who told me a little about himself. At one point, he mentioned that he had recently been in Africa for a year and a half, building houses for people! I asked him what his motivation was, and he just told me that he had gone there on vacation, and saw all the starving kids and wanted to do something about it! So he started building houses out of shipping containers for families in Africa--apparently, shipping containers are very durable, and very cheap, because most of the time, shipping companies don't know what to do with them, and they often end up filling up landfills! Anyway, he ran out of money and is now back in the US, and is now homeless because his sister sold his property! So he wants to start a nonprofit, having low-income kids of the city get involved in martial arts (that's what his real job is--martial arts) and then go on trips to Africa with him to help build houses out of shipping containers!!!
Anwyway, let me know if any of you know anyone involved in missions who could help support him and he could build houses for them!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's so cool! What a great idea!