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Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World (Random House Large Print)
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Additional Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World (Random House Large Print) Information
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Here, from Bill Clinton, is a call to action. Giving is an inspiring look at how each of us can change the world. First, it reveals the extraordinary and innovative efforts now being made by companies and organizations—and by individuals—to solve problems and save lives both “down the street and around the world.” Then it urges us to seek out what each of us, “regardless of income, available time, age, and skills,” can do to help, to give people a chance to live out their dreams.
Bill Clinton shares his own experiences and those of other givers, representing a global flood tide of nongovernmental, nonprofit activity. These remarkable stories demonstrate that gifts of time, skills, things, and ideas are as important and effective as contributions of money. From Bill and Melinda Gates to a six-year-old California girl named McKenzie Steiner, who organized and supervised drives to clean up the beach in her community, Clinton introduces us to both well-known and unknown heroes of giving. Among them:
Dr. Paul Farmer, who grew up living in the family bus in a trailer park, vowed to devote his life to giving high-quality medical care to the poor and has built innovative public health-care clinics first in Haiti and then in Rwanda;
a New York couple, in Africa for a wedding, who visited several schools in Zimbabwe and were appalled by the absence of textbooks and school supplies. They founded their own organization to gather and ship materials to thirty-five schools. After three years, the percentage of seventh-graders who pass reading tests increased from 5 percent to 60 percent;'
Oseola McCarty, who after seventy-five years of eking out a living by washing and ironing, gave $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to endow a scholarship fund for African-American students;
Andre Agassi, who has created a college preparatory academy in the Las Vegas neighborhood with the city’s highest percentage of at-risk kids. “Tennis was a stepping-stone for me,” says Agassi. “Changing a child’s life is what I always wanted to do”;
Heifer International, which gave twelve goats to a Ugandan village. Within a year, Beatrice Biira’s mother had earned enough money selling goat’s milk to pay Beatrice’s school fees and eventually to send all her children to school—and, as required, to pass on a baby goat to another family, thus multiplying the impact of the gift.
Clinton writes about men and women who traded in their corporate careers, and the fulfillment they now experience through giving. He writes about energy-efficient practices, about progressive companies going green, about promoting fair wages and decent working conditions around the world. He shows us how one of the most important ways of giving can be an effort to change, improve, or protect a government policy. He outlines what we as individuals can do, the steps we can take, how much we should consider giving, and why our giving is so important.
Bill Clinton’s own actions in his post-presidential years have had an enormous impact on the lives of millions. Through his foundation and his work in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, he has become an international spokesperson and model for the power of giving.
“We all have the capacity to do great things,” President Clinton says. “My hope is that the people and stories in this book will lift spirits, touch hearts, and demonstrate that citizen activism and service can be a powerful agent of change in the world.”
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What Customers Say About Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World (Random House Large Print):
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you'llfeel the same way, too, if you read this book. To balance the sales [he has devoted his post-presidency to giving]. After I narrowly escaped what could have been a fatalheart attack in 2004, I felt that way even more strongly.He then presents accounts of what companies have done, but I wasmost moved by the stories of such individuals as the following:* Oseola McCarty, a retired cleaning lady in Mississippi, who gave her life savings to the University of Southern Mississippi for a scholarshipfor poor African-Americans;* Paul Farmer, who grew up living in a trailer park, a boat and evena tent but eventually graduated from Harvard Medical School andwent on to devote his life to fighting AIDS and tuberculosis in destitute places around the world; and* McKensize Steiner, a six-year old California girl who organized andsupervised drives to clean-up the beach in her community.GIVING motivated me to want to do more not only for my Ashevillecommunity, but also for this country and the rest of the world. I was inspired by GIVING--written and read by Bill Clinton. rather, youwill learn what Clinton has spent his life doing since leavingthe White House. it's acall for action about how each of us can change the world.You will learn little about his presidency in this book. as he writes:* Politics is a getting business--[getting votes, support, contributions,etc].
I take that back. It was like reading the minutes of a business meeting. This book read like a laundry list of how much society's upper crust is donating to the poor - with some political agenda overtones to boot. Oh man.I was truly hoping that this would be a book about giving. The last chapter was all about political agenda.In short, the only giving it inspired me to do was to give it back to the library. I was hoping that the book would give some practical advice or some profound inspiration. I am passionate about the subject, so when I popular figure like Bill Clinton writes a book about it, I become joyous with the hope that this book will ignite a trend amongst people to give to those less fortunate. It did neither.
Most of the "giving" Bill Clinton suggests involves lots of money and endless resources. The intentions of this book are good, but the ideas are just not realistic. This book was boring. Since I don't have $1 million laying around to give to charity, I found this book pretty useless. Still, I love Bill Clinton. I couldn't finish it. Quit after 100 pages.
No one who sits by and watches 800,000 people die and not take action should never be assumed to have the least bit wisdom in the area of giving. Here is a man that could not "give" a solid response to save 800,000 Rwandans writing a book about giving.The irony is nauseating.
Many of the anecdotes were heartwarming like the woman from the Village Kisinga, in Uganda that was given a goat that produced offspring and in turn also produced income for the family of twelve, however the family didn't keep the offspring or the money gained, they decided to donate it to other families in China. Overall the book is a good read, my only criticism is that it is a bit redundant. The books organization made it easy to read. I thought that was beautiful, how people can help one another with the little they even have to begin with. The chapters were outlined with the different methods people could give. I know many people who only think that volunteering and donating money is the only way to give but they would be surprised that there are many other ways to help out those with fewer resources.
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