Maria De Longy wanted to do something special for her grandchildren and her late sister’s grandchildren. So she gave them each $1,000 and told them to go change the world.
Or get a start on it at least.
As a result, a village in Vietnam has a new generator. A disabled child in Memphis, Tenn., will get a chance to go to camp next summer.
And nine teens and young adults received something worth far more than a thousand bucks.
The Phoenix grandmother launched her pay-it-forward project this summer, after hearing from an old college roommate who was having a hard time. She sent her friend a check to help her get back on her feet and quickly realized that really, it had been a gift to herself.
“I asked her not to reply to me because I just simply wanted to help her and it gave me great pleasure,” Maria said. “So I decided to do the same thing for these nine young people who mean so much to me and meant so much to my sister.”
It was a grandchild’s dream: $1,000 to do with as they saw fit.
“I know that you can always use a little spare cash and hope you will find this gift useful in that regard,” she wrote, in the letter accompanying the checks. “However, I am also hoping that each of you will pay it forward – that is, to find a person, an organization, a charity, someone in need and give a portion of this check to them.”
Pay it forward, they did. From Maryland to Oklahoma, from Tennessee to Texas and a few points in between, Maria’s grandchildren and great nieces and nephews put the money to good use.
To give a disabled child a chance to go to summer camp in Memphis and to support a Dallas charity that helps children fighting cancer. To provide sanctuary for abused and abandoned animals in Utah and to send a student to musician Victor Wooten’s music/nature camp in Nashville. To buy a generator for Phong Nha, an area of Vietnam recently hit by a typhoon. To an Oklahoma charity that provides clothes and toiletries to children in need and to a Kansas group that serves children with autism. The list goes on…and on.
No one, however, likely got as much out of the donations as the donors, who range in age from 16 to 26.
“Not only have you shown me what true joy and happiness comes from, but you have also left me a memory that will never be forgotten, wrote Katie Adams, in reply to her grandmother.
Adams, a 20-year-old junior at the University of Alabama, sent her gift to Jacob’s Well, a ministry that works with the homeless and impoverished families in her hometown of Memphis.
Meanwhile, Megan Adams, 24, of Dallas, is spending a portion of her money on the 12-year-old CQ girl she mentors through Big Brothers Big Sisters and on Wipe Out Cancer, CQ which fights cancer in children.
“As soon as I opened the check, I selfishly thought you were sharing your riches for no significant reason (because I naturally looked at the check before the letter),” she wrote, in reply to her grandmother. “As I continued to open the letter, I read what the check was really to be used for; I had an immediate rush of ideas and excitement for how I could use the money and whose lives I could make a difference. That feeling was far more gratifying than my original selfish excitement.”
Maria considers it $9,000 well spent, to give her grandchildren and great nieces and nephews the opportunity to think bigger than themselves.
“They became involved in their communities, they did research,” she said. “They seriously considered what they were going to do and I think it made changes in them. I think they became less ‘me’ oriented.”
Something to think about on this weekend of thanksgiving.
“I thought it would be just so wonderful if even one of your readers would take this and fly with it,” she said. “There so many needs in our communities. This is just a little teeny drop in the ocean, isn’t it? If we had more little drops like this, we could make an impact.”
We could make an impact.
On our communities. But mostly on ourselves.
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