Anthony and me on the first day of the project (photo: Reed Sandridge)
This story begins on February 19th, 2010. I was out of work – I was laid off at the end of September of 2009. The country was spiraling into the deepest depression since the thirties. Anthony was homeless. He sold the Street Sense newspaper to make enough money to get by each month – but not enough to leave his small patch of frozen sidewalk behind and get into an apartment.
Our lives crossed paths that day because of a personal project that I had embarked on. After being unemployed for about two and half months, I did something that most people would consider crazy. I started giving away money every day to a stranger. I wasn’t giving a lot of money away, heck, I didn’t have a lot of money to start with, but I did the math and had just enough money to make it a year (in case I couldn’t land a job) and still have a bit left over to fund a $10 a day project I called the Year of Giving.
The concept was born largely out of inspiration from my mother. She had passed away Continue reading