I am thrilled to do this posting. It's certainly my longest yet and by far the one I'm most happy to do. My friend Justin Rudd is the personification of the word giving. His tireless efforts to improve the community in Long Beach, CA are truly inspiring. I will be doing a posting on Justin in the next couple of days so I'll explain more about his generosity at that point. This article will focus on Justin's most recent endeavor, The Giving Project, and its winner.
I asked Justin for a summary of that project and he sent me the following:
THE LONG BEACH GIVING
PROJECT gave
15 Community Action Team (CAT) volunteers $500 each. Justin Rudd, CAT's Exec.
Dir., gave them less than three weeks to give it all away. Contestant bios and rules.
INSPIRED BY
OPRAH AND IDOL, Rudd's "Long Beach Giving Project" Gave Away $10,200
in 20 Days
FOR 20
DAYS leading up to Sat., May 10, Justin Rudd and his nonprofit 501c3 Community
Action Team (C.A.T.) were looking to help people in need in the Long Beach area
with their "LONG BEACH GIVING PROJECT." Inspired
by Oprah's "Big Give" and "Idol Gives Back," Rudd says
thousands of dollars in goods and services were given locally to those who
needed it most.
NEEDS MET
included school uniforms, bus tickets, meal vouchers, prom
tickets, baby clothes, gas, sack lunches, Mother's Day cards, scout outfit, art
supplies, rent payment, blankets, dance lessons, singing lessons, hygiene
items, diapers, shoes, books, electric bill payments, office supplies &
lots more.
SAMUEL LIPPKE was the contestant who did the giving best, as determined by a
judges' panel made up of a few of Long Beach's finest philanthropists. Samuel
received an extra $1,000 to give away. See Samuel's bio, and all the other contestants' names/bios.
WHERE DID
THE MONEY COME FROM?
Funds for the program are made possible, in part, by the successes of Rudd's Long
Beach Turkey Trot and the Haute Dog Easter Parade charity events.
Other funds came from local philanthropists whose wealth ranges from meager to
millions.
HOW THE
MONEY WAS GIVEN?
Justin
Rudd and his 501c3 nonprofit Community Action Team (CAT) gave $500 to 15 of
their volunteers to give away to others in the Long Beach area with a 20-day
time limit. In total, $8,500 was given away by the contestants with $1,000
to the winner. In additional, checks were written to Steel Magnolias and
PeacePartners, and we paid for prom tickets for a local high school
student. Finally, on the finals night, each contestant was given an
additional $50 to give away and the forty spectators at our judges
interviews/dinner presentation were given $10 each to go and give.
I attended the presentation ceremony this past Saturday evening. Each of the 15 contestants gave a five minute speech explaining how and to who they gave away that $500. It was very moving to hear person after person describe their experiences and the impact they were able to make. The judges chose my friend Samuel Lippke as the winner.
Above is a quick pen sketch of him. I met Samuel at Justin's birthday party not quite a year ago. Samuel is an instantly likable, talented, funny, and genuine guy. To meet him is to want to be his friend. Simply put, he's a great guy. I knew that he was a talented photographer as well as a blogger. Please have a look at his photography site Samuel Lippke and his blog When Does This Boat Dock. From his speech at The Given Project I learned more about his passion for helping others which he demonstrated by being one of the early responders to the Indian Ocean Tsunami.
I tried my Larry King/ Anderson Cooperish best to put together a few interview question for Samuel. Here goes:
Samuel, can you give my readers a little background information. Work, interests, hobbies......
Well, I grew up in North Western WA. I lived with my hippy
parents in a bus in the woods, no running water, no computers, no TV,
just me and the family. I had 4 siblings. I moved to Southern CA to
become an Actor and to see the world. I became an assistant to one of
the best photographers I've ever known and it happens to be my brother! So, I'm
a photographer by profession, I shoot high end weddings all over the
world. I LOVE shooting fashion and I photo journalism mixed. Someday I
hope to shoot for fashion magazines and Ad campaigns. I'm really
interested in world politics, the freeing of innocent people and
photographing interactions between humans. Oh and I have a sunglass
collection, I love watching the Lakers
play and I enjoy meeting up with friends for nights on the town. I
love doing crazy things with my hair, I love music and making friends. Spontaneous travel is my hobby.
What was your involvement in the Tsunami relief effort?
My Brother and I were in Indonesia Surfing and working at an orphanage when the Earthquake and Tsunami hit. When
we (My brother Ira, Friend Scott, our translator Rolly and Myself)
heard about the lack of aid and the amount of death that occurred an
island over from ours, we knew we had to help! So we packed up our
gear, threw together money for medical supplies and began our crazy
journey to ground zero. It was a wild trip just getting there...
between going to the UN for direction to eventually talking to the
governor of the island and getting onto a military B52. We finally
arrived to find death EVERYWHERE! it was so hard to know where to
start. We were walking around thousands of dead bodies that had been
laying there for 2 days. It felt hopeless. Finally after a few hours of
trying to locate a place to help out at, we found a
makeshift hospital and we started to restore order. Quickly each of us
became medics, doctors, surgeons and after the 4th day, Scott was
helping with amputations. It was a wild experience of death,
fear, sadness, happiness (Seeing the peoples faces when they found our
makeshift hospital), We were finally forced to leave after the 5th
day. Terrorists in the area where trying to make a statement and wanted
to capture us American's. The military ushered us out of the town and
later that day the US. Marines showed up. It was perfect timing and we
were able to I think save thousands of lives! I went home as sick as
you can get while being a healthy young male... I'm positive what I got
was Malaria.
Quick Note: The Hospital in Banda Aceh
was destroyed, the nurses and doctors were killed and our
makeshift hospital quickly became the hospitol. The final death count
in Indonesia was 167,736.
As for the Giving Project, where did you direct your money?
I wanted to effect the people of Long Beach
that were at a wits end. I wanted to give what I could to bring hope.
To show the people I worked with that they were on their way up.
My
first effort & $100 were spent bringing 90 lunches to a homeless
population in Downtown Long Beach. A group of my friends helped me make
sandwiches and then ride around on our bikes talking to people and
handing them lunches.
Another project was helping a
women in her 50's that was diagnosed with MS to go along with her
dementia and brain tumor. She has recently gained 50 pounds and doesn't
fit into any of her clothes I took her on a shopping spree to get
the necessities so she could be comfortable in her clothes.
#3
was for a 3rd grade girl. she recently lost her grandfather, father and
brother and is devastated. I met with her in the park, played
basketball with her and listened to her sing. she has an amazing voice
and great potential. I offered to get her singing lessons. She was
thrilled!! I hope to keep up with her and her family and watch her grow
as a singer.
#4 was directed towards mothers day. I
called a few flower places and got the best deal possible. bought 50
flowers, then went to rite aid... tried to get a good deal on cards
with no avail...I bought them anyways. then took the flowers and cards
down to the Long Beach women's shelter and gave the cards and flowers to kids to give to their mothers for mothers day.
#5.
I met with a women named Susie. She is homeless jobless and a mother of
2. she is struggling to get to and from job interviews due to no phone
access and a car with tires that need air in them every 30 miles. So I
called around and got 4 tires for $100.
I think the last one was the toughest, it took me 3 days to accomplish it.
I
took the extra money from all the projects and went back to the flower
store. bought as many flowers as possible (30 in total) and handed them
out to random people on 2nd st.
What will you do with your $1,000?
I'm still trying to figure out how to best use the money for Long Beach.
First off I am going to approach a few big businesses in the area
looking to double maybe triple the amount. then offer to drop the first
and last months rent on an apartment for susie and her 2 kids... IF she
can get a job somewhere. I'm also planning on working with almost all
of my projects. I would like to continue the friendships as well
as continue to show them there are people out there that love to come
alongside and help.
For
those who are inspired by this, and can't imagine who wouldn't be, how
would you encourage others about giving. Where can they start? That
question is for me too.
Start small! find people
around you that could use not just money, but smaller things... start
by getting involved in the community, challenge yourself to give a
certain amount to someone but not giving cash,checks or money orders...
give first hand and be creative. plus its fun!!
Now that you've heard from Samuel, I'd like to show some of his work. This black and white photo is one of my favorites.
I also love this photo of his friends who will marry this summer.
Here's Samuel with his trusty camera. Too bad he's so out of shape. Buddy you need to do a few more curls..... you're looking scrawny. :)
Samuel recently took a trip to Cuba. Be sure and read about his adventures on his blog. I loved seeing the every day street scenes.
Here's Samuel with some friends he made along the way.
As you can imagine, Samuel is spoken for. Even though I've only spent a little time around his girlfriend, I can safely say that Audry is pure, undiluted sunshine.
Here's a sketch I did of them with some digital shading.
Thanks Samuel and Justin for helping me out with this posting. You're both so inspiring. Happy to call you my friends.
