they're not passing the buck

If you really look around you, you're bound to find sources of inspiration--such as people who make quiet but significant efforts to help those around them. Leafing through the June 20 issue of Time revealed a few pages devoted to philanthropists and their ways of giving. Here are two of them and a little about what they're doing:

Charles Best: doing his part from a small public high school
In the cramped, windowless lunchroom at Wings Academy, a small public high school in the Bronx in New York City, teachers are often buzzing about big new ideas on how to teach and reach students. But few of their improvement schemes made it into classrooms until rookie teacher Charles Best had the best idea of all: to create an online charity that would give citizen philanthropists direct access to needy classrooms.

Best's vision became donorschoose.org, a site that allows donors to search teacher requests and fun the projects they like best. The charity then buys the supplies--anything from colored pencils to microscopes--and ships them to classrooms. "People knew the plight of students in our public schools," says Best, 29, whose own education, at Yale University and an exclusive New Hampshire boarding school, was unmarked by economic hardship of any kind. "They wanted to help out but wondered if their contributions were going to go into a black hole."

In the spring of 2000, Best used roasted pears (his mom's recipe) to lure 10 sweet-toothed colleagues to post proposals on the site. He initially failed to find donors, but he believed in the project so strongly that he used his own meager's teacher's salary to anonymously fund all 10 of them--then moved in with his parents to keep the site and himself fiscally afloat. Since then, residents of all 50 states and 10 foreign countries have donated over $3.5 million to fund more than 7,000 projects. The charity garnered a Tech Museum laureate for innovations in e-procurement and has won over corporate sponsors such as Yahoo, Lehman Bros. and Bank of America.

DonorsChoose may be a virtual charity, but its effect on children is very real. Every shipment inclues a disposable camera and guidelines for writing class thank-you notes. A fifth-grader in the Bronx reduced a regular donor to tears with this note: "No one has ever done anything that nice for me before...I want to do something nice for you. Just let me know what you need, and I'll take care of it." Vani Khajuria, a North Carolina fourth-grader, wrote her patron, "My children's children's children will treasure this book." Eloquent proof that a minute or two on a website can have an effect for generations. - By Amanda Bower

** Best's online charity has since helped some 6,000 needy classrooms throughout New York City, Chicago, the Bay area and North Carolina. Los Angeles is next.


Zainab Salbi: providing hands-on aid and support via mail to women in war-torn regions
Zainab Salbi was a terrified teenager in Baghdad during the war between Iran and Iraq. Bombs routinely fell around her house. Years later, as a 23-year-old student at George Mason University in Virginia [USA], she read a TIME article about the systematic rape of Bosnian women by Serbian soldiers, and it moved her to action. "I grew up in a war, so I was drawn to suffering," she says. Within six months, having raised $2,000 with the help of a local Unitarian church, she traveled to Bosnia, determined to do something. Today, Salbi's group, Women for Women International, based in Washington and with 180 staff members and a budget of $11.1 million, is a lifeline for war-torn women in eight countries: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. The organization picks up where humanitarian aid leaves off. "We work with women as they get out of the refugee tent--out of the victim stage--and help them become survivors and active citizens," Salbi says.

A third of the budget is raised through "sister to sister" sponsorship. Women in the U.S. and other countries contribute $27 a month for a year to women in a conflict zone. And they exchange letters. The cash is for the war victim to buy food and pay for her children's schooling. The letters help overcome the bitterness. "You feel hopeless," Salbi says. "Then a stranger writes to say, 'I care. I am listening to you.'" Last year, women in the program exchanged 44,000 letters. Salbi is looking to expand. Says she: "It is cheaper to build peace than go to war." - By Margot Roosevelt

** Outside Sarajevo, Salbi's staff helped set up a messenger system so that if a wife was being beaten by her husband--domestic violence often increases after a war--40 women would converge to shout down the offender.


The rest of the feature is in Time magazine's June 20 issue (Asia).