The Power of Half

I am a regular reader of the fantastic site Optimist.com which if you are an optimist – or aspire to be one - you will find as a breath of fresh air, they cover daily good news headlines, inspiring stories, promote charities, and spread optimistic stories from all over the world.

Their regular e-mail is a great tonic and this morning one story in particular caught my eye. The Power of Half is the true story of Salwen family, from Atlanta, Georgia, who is 2007 sold their $2 million home and moved into a property half the size and with half the status, donating the difference to anti-hunger efforts in Ghana.

The family tell us on their blog about the experience "Through The Power of Half, our family set out to make a small difference in the world and ended up transforming ourselves. We found that creating a "half" project was an amazing powerful tool to building deeper connections and trust among us."

It started with a comment that daughter Hannah, who was 14 at the time, made when she saw a homeless man begging on the street beside a Mercedes. “Dad, if that man”—she pointed to the Mercedes—“had a less nice car, that man there”—she pointed to the homeless man—“could have a meal.” Kevin, the quintessential modern dad, recognized a teachable moment: “But you know if we had a less nice car, he could have a meal.”

Now Kevin and Hannah Salwen have written ‘The Power of Half, One Family’s Decision to Stop Talking and Start Giving Back’, a book with a big concept – if you can’t give up half your home, what about half your wardrobe, half your car? What can you live without? In an age of recession following an era of conspicuous consumption, it’s a novel and timely idea.

And you can buy it in support of Quest4Change, just click through this link and follow it to the store of your choice and at no extra cost to you a percentage of the sale will go directly towards supporting our projects in Africa and South America. Inspiration and a donation to charity in one go - Brilliant!

Yes, that's right, you can shop online with massive retailers like M&S, Amazon and many more and raise valuable funds for our projects. You can access over 100 leading retailers using our webshop and every time you'll automatically earn money for us! You don't pay anything extra, so please try to use it whenever you can.

Find our webshop at buy.at/Quest4Change (please bookmark this link for future use).