The Believe Project: Instilling a desire to help others
Editor's note: This story is part of our National Newspaper section.
It started on a whim with a why-not-just-ask email addressed to the editor of the Daily Herald two days before Thanksgiving in 2014.
Carolyn Gable, a Lake Zurich business owner who built a comfortable living from nothing and had spent a couple of years trying to help others who faced the same kinds of challenges she did years ago, wanted to find a way to expand on her idea.
"A couple of years ago I started the Believe Project," she wrote. "It started by a series of incidents where I wanted to help someone in need and didn't have the courage to stop and offer my financial assistance. From being in a grocery store line where someone is out of cash and needs to take items out of their bag, to offering assistance to someone in need. ..... The project has, like many things in life, hit a plateau. I want to know if the Herald would have any interest in this project."
Did we ever. One of the most rewarding things a community newspaper can do is connect people who want to help with people who need it. It's all part of our mission to help make our corner of the world a little better place.
We tinkered with the framework of Carolyn's idea: Ask readers to submit a short essay on how they would help someone out with $100, and then send those with the most compelling ideas the cash and some inspirational messages and let them pay it forward.
Carolyn would supply 31 $100 bills to cover one mini story for each day of December, and the Daily Herald would solicit the stories, publish the winning entries and send the money to the do-gooders.
Great, we thought. It'll be a nice bit of inspiration for the holiday season.
But then the stories started being published. And readers responded. It was magical.
We were flooded with stories of people who wanted to help. Some readers sent us checks to extend the feature beyond New Year's Day. Carolyn, buoyed by the great response, doubled her initial donation.
Instead of choosing 31 recipients to split a total of $3,100, the Believe Project doled out $14,400 to 136 winners in more than 60 suburbs. What was to end on New Year's Eve lasted until April.
We've partnered with Carolyn ever since. And she has enthusiastically agreed to work with us again this December - the fifth year of our partnership.
Parents have used the Believe Project to teach their kids the importance of giving to others. Some have matched the $100 with $100 of their own. People have used the money to help families with medical bills, given Christmas gifts to neighbors when they knew food on the table was a priority, hired help for people who couldn't do something on their own.
All the stories are different. All inspiring. Hundreds of lives changed in the process - both for the person receiving the gift and the person giving it.
In the end, the $100 is merely a seed that feeds a sense of empathy and community and love of common man.
What greater thing could a community newspaper do?