the Ripple Effect

Everyone knows what the Ripple Effect is...." the ever expanding ripples across water when an a object is dropped into it." That is why we created the Dinner Project. Life is full of meetings, emails or new tasks we assign ourselves. In the end we are left feeling overwhelmed, underfunded, and thinking, "Is this going to work? I am just one person...can a little bit really make a difference?"

During naptime this week (procrastinating on the household chores) I watched an HBO documentary "A Small Act." It is about a holacaust survivor who was displaced to Sweden as a child, became a preschool teacher and joined a charity program and donated $15 a month to sponsor a Kenyan child in his/her secondary studies. She never knew what happened to that child. "Her" child excelled in his secondary school studies, received top grades and received a scholarship to the University of Nairobi, then another scholarship to Harvard. Today Chris Mburu is a Human Rights lawyer for the United Nations and founded the Harriet Back Education Fund in 2003, which sponsors scholarships to primary school graduates who have no possible way of going on with their studies due to the cost (roughly $40 a month). A few years later he decided to find Harriet and share with her what her gift of hope had created. Talk about a Ripple Effect!

So when our group feels we are but a drop of water in an ocean of duties, ideas, and responsibilites; I will remember what Chris says in the film, "You have to do something. I know I cannot provide relief, support and help to all the suffering that is around me. But I want to do one thing; I want to do one action that will work towards relieving that situation." So we are hoping your one action will be to join us in the Dinner Project.