Akram Youth The Power of Half | November 2015 | Akram Youth | Page 14

I

t all started when fourteen-year-old
Hannah Salwen had a eureka moment.
Seeing a homeless man in her
neighborhoods at the same instant she
spotted a man driving a glistening
Mercedes, she said, "Dad, if that man had
a less nice car, that man there could have a
meal."
Until that day, the Salwens had
been like many of us - accumulating more
and more stuff to support a comfortable
life style. Hannah Salwen, 14 years old at
the time, had a desire to do something to
fix the world’s wrongs and her parents
knew they had to act on her urge to do
something about this disparity of wealth.
As a family, they made the extraordinary
decision to sell their Atlanta mansion, and
bought a house half its size and downgrading to a smaller home, and give half of
14 | November 2015

the sale price to a worthy charity. At first it
seemed outlandish: What, are we crazy?
Then it became a challenge: We are totally
doing this. Their plan eventually took
them across the globe and well out of
their comfort zone. In the end they
learned that they had the power to
change a little corner of the world.
The family down-graded, by
replacing their home with a house that
was half as expensive and less than half
the size and donated other half of the
proceeds of the sale of their original home
($850,000) to a charity. They chose The
Hunger Project, a charity that works to
lessen the hunger of 30,000 rural villagers
in over 30 villages in Ghana, and help the
villagers move from poverty to selfreliance.
Asked if he was suggesting the
other people follow suit, he answered:
"We never encourage anybody to sell
their house. That was just the thing that
we had more than enough of. For others it
may be time, or extra things, or expensive
possessions, or clothes in their closet.
Everybody can give away half of one
thing, and put it to use. This way you can
do some good deeds and you will do some
wonderful things for your relationships.
The power of Half is truly a concept.
It sparks off a thought amongst many.
Just imagine how much time & money is
spent in lavish marriages, birthday
celebrations, parties, feasts, festival
gatherings, use of expensive items 9 etc
more as a matter of show and to impress
society rather than actual need. If these
spending can be cut cost-wise not
material wise, the balance half can make a
big difference to satisfy someone’s basic