Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [23]
About the same time, in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was virtually wiped out by Katrina, volunteers turned the first new homes over to residents. Built of pine, elevated five feet, and designed to resist hurricane winds, the houses cost only $125,000 each. The project was organized by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which also provided the financing with support from a California bank. ACORN works to empower low-and moderate-income people through the grassroots activism of more than 200,000 members in one hundred communities all over America. The owners expect to repay the mortgage and previous loans from funds from Louisiana’s Road Home project when they are released. The houses were designed with help from the Louisiana State University School of Architecture. The volunteers included university students, local church members, young people from Covenant House, and novelist Richard Ford, who recently moved back to the city and spoke at the ceremony celebrating the construction and handover. He called the occasion “a valiant and hopeful house raising,” an allusion to the barn raisings of early America, where neighbors pitched in to help one another erect buildings on newly settled land. All the citizens who responded to Katrina’s devastation, including many who are still working to bring back New Orleans and other communities, are part of that great tradition.
Just as with the gift of money, some of the most impressive time-givers are young people. In 1993, a once-in-five-hundred-years flood hit the heartland of America as the Mississippi River poured over its banks and levees, inundating cities, towns, and farmlands. I traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, to survey the damage, encourage the citizens, and meet with the emergency teams working to minimize the destruction and take care of the people who were flooded out of their homes. I also visited the volunteers who were stacking sandbags and delivering food and supplies. As always in such situations, all those I met were energetic, dedicated, and selfless. But one stood out. Her name was Brianne Schwantes.
A native of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Brianne had come to Iowa with her family to work in the Red Cross volunteer center and help deliver food and supplies. She was just thirteen, quite small for her age, and her body showed the effects of having been born with a rare bone disease, osteogenesis imperfecta, which made her skeleton incredibly fragile and every bone in her body vulnerable to fracture under the slightest strain. She had thirteen broken bones at birth and her doctors told her parents they didn’t expect her to live through the day. But live she did, going home with her body covered with tiny casts and Popsicle-stick splints.
Her parents decided that instead of shielding Brianne from all risks, they would try to let her live a happy, healthy life, being as careful as they could, while accepting that bad things would happen. They let her be a kid and take chances, promising themselves not to blame each other when another incident occurred. Growing up, she broke the long bones in her leg about once every six months and broke toes, fingers, and ribs more frequently. By the time I met her she had undergone numerous surgeries. But she had a smile on her face, and determination in her voice. She had already testified before Congress five times to urge more funding for the National Institutes of Health, and had started Little Bones, a quarterly newsletter for children suffering from rare diseases, which has more than five thousand subscribers worldwide.
Brianne didn’t stop giving her time after the flood. When she was fifteen, she worked with Franciscan missionaries to raise more than $25,000 for South African orphans. At eighteen, she worked as a counselor for the summer at Camp AmeriKids, a summer camp for children with HIV and other life-threatening diseases. At twenty, she co-founded and managed the first women’s ice hockey team at American University in Washington, D.C. I met her again in 1999 with her