I received a donation from a 6th grade Teacher yesterday, on behalf of a student of hers who's trying to raise money for her local shelter.
The teacher asked me if I would make a comment on the student's blog, as someone who "gives big" to someone making their own 'small' effort.
This is what I came up with, for better of for worse:
Dear Jamie,
I am the CEO of a nonprofit organization called NACER.org. I want to congratulate you on your compassionate efforts, and share a story with you.
A little boy once had a hard life. His mom and dad were divorced, and his mom had many problems. His dad was in the military, and was stationed in a far away place. His mom sometimes hit him, and spent many nights away from home, leaving the little boy alone with his brother.
He was alone much of the time, and spent his days playing on the desert near his home, most often looking at or for little animals that lived there.
He brought home all kinds of sick and injured animals and tended them as best he could, learning much about their bodies, what made them tick, and coming to understand many of their behaviors. For a time he thought he might want to be a veterinarian. As he grew older he thought he might want to work with higher primates, teaching them sign language and trying to understand their inner worlds. He always suspected that animals and people had a lot in common. That animals felt things just like people do - maybe in different ways, but feelings just the same.
He always felt sad for animals that were deprived, neglected or mistreated; maybe because he also felt that way at times.
But during the most important time in his educational life he wandered away from home, and lost his chance to be any kind of doctor or scientist.
He grew up to be a good man, but with many troubles of his own. It took a long time before he found the strength to have a calm and stable life. Even so, he always wanted to help people and animals - the flame inside him never died. He always tried to understand the importance and value of others, especially the animals, and still wanted to give something to make life a kinder, better thing for all. This flame is called ‘compassion’.
The man loved the ocean and became a diver, so that he could visit the fishes and the coral reefs, because he found them to be places of calm and beauty.
There were no coral reefs in the place where this man lived, so he needed to travel to far away places in order to do his diving. He began to travel to Mexico, where the world’s second largest barrier reef is.
But he didn't like being a ‘tourist’. He felt that tourists were often people who visited other places only to take something for themselves - having fun and enjoyment, but not really coming away with any understanding of the people or places they'd visited. He didn't want to just leave a few dollars behind in the pockets of rich hotel owners - he wanted to experience the land and the culture.
So when he traveled he went to out of the way places in his own car, slept in tents and ate where the people ate. He learned to speak a little bit of the language and made friends wherever he ventured.
He was always saddened to see the dogs. Everywhere he went there were dogs without names or homes - skinny dogs with broken limbs and sicknesses that made their fur fall off, or left them blind, or weak; sometimes even before they were more than a few weeks old.
He saw dogs with terrible injuries from cruelty - run down on purpose by cab drivers, shot, beaten, and starved. Sometimes these poor dogs would come into the restaurants where the man ate, hoping for a little scrap of food from humans whom they were afraid of, but depended upon to survive. He would always give them food from his plate, and always tried to show them affection and kindness - even when others tried to chase them away.
The man knew that not all of the people were mean or careless, but where there is poverty and illiteracy, there are often problems in the society that cause suffering for everyone. Many people in Mexico love their animals and treat them very well. Mexico is a diverse, complicated land, where great beauty coexists with terrible problems. Mexico can be a poor place with little opportunity, and this is why ignorant or hopeless people behave in uneducated ways - even people who might in other ways be warm, giving and faithful.
One day the man met a friend, and they discovered that they had the same feelings about the dogs in Mexico. His friend felt so strongly about helping them that she left her profitable business to attend college, so that she could become a Veterinary Technician - not because she wanted to work in a vet clinic, but because she wanted to be able to help the dogs in Mexico.
The man had acquired special skills along the way in his life, as a writer, an organizer, and in putting together organizations that helped people. He knew the rules of forming and running charitable companies, and knew about computers, and also understood the culture and people of Mexico.
These two friends put their heads together and decided that they had the perfect set of complimentary skills and ideas to do some great good.
The one thing they didn't have was lots of money. So they used what they had, and started out by buying some supplies - a few syringes and bottles of vaccines and medicines. They went to Mexico and visited a small town where they knew the suffering of the dogs was great. They brought food for the animals, and they made coloring books for the kids about taking care of them, and they did some good.
In Mexico, there are millions upon millions of homeless dogs. Its hard to imagine that giving shots to a few dogs in a small village could make a difference, where there are more suffering dogs than a person can count - even if they stayed awake every night, counting 24 hours a day, every day for months on end.
But they had seen the terrible suffering , and knew that maybe they could stop some of the suffering for even *a few* dogs.
Both of them imagined, “What if it was MY dog who was suffering - wouldn't it matter for him if someone tried to help; and wouldn't it matter to *me*?
So they did the best they could. They took pictures of the work they did, and showed these pictures to others. They asked for help, and some people responded.
Soon they had enough people and enough money to bring a Veterinarian, and some other Vet Techs back to the village.
They knew that one way to stop the suffering was to prevent the dogs from having more unwanted puppies. So they gathered together many of the dogs in the village. There, at the edge of a beautiful lagoon in a beautiful rain forest, together with the village children they operated on as many dogs as they could, until they ran out of supplies.
While they were there, they gave away clothing and books and school supplies to the people of the village, and when they left, they knew they had done a lot of good - even if only for a few dogs compared to all the dogs of Mexico.
They again brought back the pictures of their work, and found even more people willing to help. They got Doctors from the famous Animal Planet show, ‘Emergency Vets’ to help, and went back again and again, to other poor villages where Veterinarians had never gone before. And they kept going back to the first village, feeding the dogs, encouraging the children, and watching the results of their work over the course of time.
Years went by. One dog at a time, they came to realize that they had prevented the births of as many unwanted dogs in the future, as presently wander the streets of Mexico. Millions of dogs would be saved from lives of terrible suffering, starvation, loveless, unwanted lives. They would not be born where they were not wanted, and where people didn't have the resources for their care.
One dog at a time, they managed to find homes for puppies found in drain pipes, caves and under bushes. The badly injured and maimed puppies got special attention, sometime keeping them up long into the night for weeks on end as they struggled to save little lives that otherwise nobody would have cared for.
Sometimes they lost those battles, and they shed tears of great sadness each time. But more often, they would win, and a sick or broken little puppy would go on to find a home where they could share the immense love that lives in the hearts of all pups everywhere. Hundreds upon hundreds of dogs, over the years, found new homes in a new land where they were loved and wanted.
One dog at a time, the man and his friends made a difference. There are still millions of suffering dogs in Mexico, and millions more in poor places around the world. The work will never be finished. If the man were to look at all that will never be done, he might become defeated and overwhelmed. Instead he sees the good that has mattered for each little life, and for the people he has touched, together with his many friends in so many places.
This man knows that he is blessed with a rich and rewarding life, and that he was able to take his own sadness and turn it into compassion, and heal his own heart by giving - starting with almost nothing. He has not felt alone in the world for a very long time.
Jamie, you are a small person doing something that might seem small to others, when all the problems of the world seem so big. But a butterfly that spreads it’s wings in China can start a little breeze that adds to another little breeze that someday makes a hurricane, that blows a hundred years later on the other side of the world.
You are a butterfly, spreading your wings. The more times your wings move the air around you, the bigger the effect in ways and places you will never see, and can never even know. The effect is mighty.
You too have the flame of compassion in your heart - a special and powerful thing in this difficult, challenging world.
I hope and pray that your life is good, and that you begin with strength and love in your voyage of compassion. You are making a difference, Jamie, and I salute you.
Sincerely,
Steven Nelson
CEO, NACER.org
Aurora, Colorado, USA / Q. Roo & Yucatan, Mexico
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