A Labor Day Road Trip That I’ll Never Forget
I had been in conversations with my friends John Hancox and Jake Harriman for a few months about this new organization they were planning to launch, an organization dedicated to the work of addressing extreme poverty in fragile rural communities. Jake had been in Kenya serving in an internship with another organization, and we had all been reading his blog posts about his experiences working in rural African farming communities. I had actually shared one of his posts with a number of friends. Jake and I had chatted about the idea a few times while he was in Africa, but we were finally going to meet and discuss things in person, on Labor Day in Morgantown, West Virginia, Jake, John, and myself.
We had planned to meet for an hour on Labor Day morning, but that quickly evolved into a road trip to Hancock, Maryland to meet up with another longtime friend, Andy Cogar, who had been working with Jake on the paperwork to get the organization, Nuru International, officially setup. During the day, we all reminisced about our undergraduate days and recalled conversations we had had even during our freshman year about how amazing it would be if that the reason we all ended up in the same residence hall at West Virginia University was to do something world-changing together later in life. And here we were, dreaming about working together to make a lasting impact in the lives of our global neighbors living in desperation. Each of us had independently concluded that extreme poverty was the greatest humanitarian crisis in our world, and that the desperation created by extreme poverty led to a whole host of other issues that have ripple effects across the globe from violent extremism and child soldiers to trafficking and slavery. And here we were, all together, talking about working together to do something to put an end to these injustices.
Looking back, I had no idea how much that one road trip would shape my life. There is something special about being able to launch an idea to reality with a group of friends, and that Labor Day road trip opened the door to seeing so much positive change in the world. Together, with a whole host of incredibly talented people from multiple continents, we have been able to see more than 100,000 people begin to lift themselves out of extreme poverty for good. We have seen what started as an idea become a reality and take shape in communities in Kenya and Ethiopia, and we have had the privilege of witnessing thousands of our friends and family members rally with us in the belief that a different kind of world is possible, a world where hope replaces desperation, where tools and knowledge create new opportunities, and where each of us is able to find a way to serve in making the world a little better and a little brighter.
In some ways it is only fitting that we were meeting on Labor Day. Each of us came from families who worked hard to ensure that we were able to have a future with more opportunities than our parents had. We were each richly blessed with gifts and talents and our upbringing served as a reminder that our gifts and talents are meant to be used in service to others. And, just like us, the people we eventually began working with starting in September 2008, were a lot like us and our parents. They were hard-working farmers who wanted to provide a better future for their children, and who wanted to live as good neighbors in their communities. Each of us was dreaming a big dream for seeing the end of extreme poverty in our lifetime. We had been inspired by the Bono’s and the Nelson Mandela’s of the world and wanted to work hard to do our part.
And today, eleven years after that labor day road trip, we are continuing to dream big dreams for making a difference in the lives of others, and we are working hard, together with you, to make those dreams a reality. May we each make the most of the limited number of days we have on this earth, and may we be ever attuned to faithfully living out our calling in meaningful service to others in this world.