First of all, I have several pictures below I’d love to share with you from my recent trip to Haiti. It’s surreal to me that a week ago, I was in Haiti – hosted by the good folks at World Concern. The primary reason was to assess the work that they’ve done and grasp a glimpse of the strategy ahead – for them and other organizations. Consider partnering with us via our Haiti Relief and Rebuild Fund.
As you know, I’m now in Port-au-Prince Haiti. You might be wondering, “Why are you in Haiti right now?” – especially since nearly two months have passed since the devastating Haiti quake on January 12, 2010.
After years of dreaming and conspiring, we’re very excited to share the name and vision of our poverty organization: One Day’s Wages.
What is our vision?
One Day’s Wages is a grassroots organization and movement by which we hope to inspire millions of people to give their “One Day’s Wages” to fight and end extreme global poverty. 100% of your donations will go directly to fund grants, projects, & organizations that are doing amazing work amongst the poorest of the poor. Our purpose is to promote greater awareness about global extreme poverty, invite simple financial giving, and to provide sustainable relief and empowerment through strategic collaborations. Our vision is to change global issues of injustice affecting millions of people, regardless of race, culture, sex, age, or religion.
We are committing our one year’s salary ($68,000) to launch this movement and invite you to join us by donating one day’s wages. Other donations to help with the initial operations fund are needed and appreciated. Imagine what we can accomplish together! [Here’s why we’ve gone public with our pledge.]
I hope that while this entry topic might not be as alluring as your top search engine topics like Britney Spears and Barack Obama, you’ll take a few minutes to read up the progress of our global poverty organization. This has been one of the most humbling seasons of our life. When we went public with our vision to give our year’s salary to start this poverty initiative, we had absolutely no idea about what was in store with the financial crisis and meltdown. Our convictions have been tested but each time we think about how “bad” we have it, we’re reminded of the grave situation for the poorest of the poor – those affected by “extreme global poverty.”
Here’s 5 Updates on our Progress:
FACEBOOK. On Friday, December 5, our Facebook Group – which can be accessed at http://fightglobalpoverty.com – surpassed 200,000 members. It’s pretty amazing considering we started the group on May 15, 2008. While there are no guarantees if folks will ultimately support our organization, it confirms our aspiration for our initiative in helping change the world:
Minhee and I are bracing ourselves for the long, hard, exciting and hopefully, fruitful work ahead as we attempt to lay some groundwork for the humanitarian organization we’re envisioning and its work with global poverty. We are awaiting word and documents [any day] from the State of Washington and will then move forward with revealing the name, raising some initial funds, and other steps. We may be stupid idealists but there is something within us that believe we can be catalysts to a global grassroots movement to help raise funds to fight global poverty.
But before we begin sharing and working in the weeks and months ahead, I wanted to take a post to answer the questions I have received from friends, acquaintances, church community folks, blog readers, and strangers that read an earlier post regarding the public announcement of our family’s decison to give up this year’s salary and additional funds to invest in starting this organization.
In some form or another, the question I want to address has been similar in content to this from a thoughtful blog reader:
EUGENE CHO 