Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [46]
When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, the church collected money, food, and other supplies for victims, and worked with the Red Cross to house more than three hundred of the evacuees at its campground for several weeks. Among them was an African-American family, Charles and Ovelia Haywood and their two teenage children. They decided to remain in Alexandria, and Charles is now a full-time member of the church staff, further integrating both its congregation and staff, still a rare phenomenon in the South.
Besides Grace House, House of Mercy, and its hurricane relief efforts, the Pentecostals of Alexandria runs a number of other outreach programs for needy people. Here is what the minister, Rev. Anthony Mangun, told me about their commitment to new beginnings: “This church works daily as if there is a disaster. If I pray for anything for your book, it is that it will convey the importance of coming together—the values of giving over receiving—and the power that lies in each of us to reach out to someone and change a life, and thereby change the world.”
This is one story of people who believe that God has called on them to give new beginnings. It represents a kind of giving done every day in every community in the United States and countless places across the world. These givers are easy to find, and they always need volunteers.
I CLOSE THIS chapter with perhaps the most meaningful new-beginnings project I’ve ever participated in, the fund-raising efforts with former President George H. W. Bush for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in southern Asia.
For the tsunami, we tried to raise the overall level of giving in America and put together a relatively small fund of about $14 million, out of which we financed the reconstruction of schools, health facilities, fishing boats, and other economic restoration efforts, and scholarships for students from Aceh in Indonesia, by far the hardest-hit area, to study at Texas A&M and the University of Arkansas.
The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund raised more than $130 million, of which $40 million was allocated to states to fill in gaps in federal programs; $30 million to institutions of higher education, many of which were damaged by the hurricane; $25 million to interfaith groups; and just over $35 million to direct grants for a variety of programs, including support for distressed local governments, helping Alabama shrimpers whose boats were blown onto land repair them and get them back into the water, providing mental health services, and, for New Orleans, rebuilding schools as green buildings, funding charter schools and more Teach for America members, and establishing a City Year youth service chapter.
The efforts George Bush and I made to help people begin again benefited more than those who received the funds. It also gave us the opportunity to rebuild a friendship that began almost twenty-five years ago, when he was vice president and I was a young governor. We’ve had a lot of fun traveling around the United States and the world. Although we still have our political differences, we can laugh about them now, even when arguing. I never forget that George Bush is eighty-three (though he’s still parachuting out of airplanes!) and has now given more than sixty years of service to his country, beginning as a pilot in World War II. I should be doing this kind of work, but he could easily take a pass. Instead he keeps volunteering.
Our partnership seemed to strike a responsive chord in America and around the world, I think because it was an affirmation of our common humanity—not just his and mine as former opponents, but the essential humanity that we all share but too easily forget until something bad happens.
I’m still