VOA标准英语2010年-Family Sells Home for Hunger

Georgia family downsizes, donates half to charity

Philip Graitcer | Atlanta, Georgia 15 February 2010

Photo: Kevin Salwen/Salwen family
The Salwens in front of their smaller home after selling their mansion¹ and donating half of the profits to charity.

 

Related Links:
The Power of Half
The Hunger Project
 

One day in 2006, Hannah Salwen and her father, Kevin, stopped at a traffic light in downtown Atlanta. The 14 year old remembers looking out the window. "And I saw this homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, holding up a sign that said, 'Homeless. Please help.'

And then, on my right, I saw a man in a Mercedes coupe." She looked back and forth² between the two extremes, the 'haves' and the 'have nots' and then turned to her father. "I said to my dad, 'You know, if that guy - to the right, the man in the Mercedes - didn't have such a nice car, then the man, the homeless man, would have a meal,'" Hannah recalls.

It took the Salwens two years to sell their palatial³ $2-million house.
Coming to grips with the world's inequities

 

That evening, she was still angry about what she'd seen. Her dad, a writer and entrepreneur, tried to explain that their family was really trying to make a difference. He pointed⁴ out that they were out in the community doing good work, volunteering at the local food bank and homeless shelter.

But that wasn't enough for Hannah. "I'm looking across the table," Kevin recalls, "and all I could feel is Hannah's eyes staring at me with one word shining in them, and it's, 'This is lame⁵, totally lame.'"

Her mother, Joan, suggested, a bit facetiously⁶, "Oh, what do you want to do? Do you want to sell the house?" And Hannah replied, 'Yeah! That is what I want to do.'"

There's no longer a separate room for the ping-pong table and the dining room table doubles as a computer work station in the family's new house.
A dramatic move

So the Salwens sold their seven-bedroom mansion and bought a house one-half its size. They donated half of the profits to charity.

To Hannah, the house was a tool for her charitable work. But her father wasn't convinced, until he looked around and saw how many possessions the family had that they really didn't need. And he says he realized something else. "This could be kind of fun. I wondered what this process would be like and I wondered what it would do. It was kind of a little bit of journey into the unknown," Kevin says.

Hannah visited Ghana in 2008, where her family's $800,000 donation to The Hunger Project is helping⁷ to build community meeting halls, micro-loan banks, food storage facilities and health centers in several villages.
Since everyone in the family including Hannah, her younger brother Joseph and her parents had to give up something in order to downsize, Joan thought each ought to have an equal say in what would happen to the proceeds from the house sale. It would be one person, one vote.

It took more than a year for the family to choose a charity to support. On Sunday mornings, they'd meet over breakfast to discuss projects. Finally, they chose the Hunger Project. Kevin says its philosophy matched the family's thinking. "What we loved about the Hunger Project was that their methodology was 'We trust in the people in these communities to build their own futures⁸.'"

The Salwens say their endeavor has brought them much closer as a family.
Trading stuff for togetherness

 

The family is adjusting to life in a smaller house. There's no longer a separate room for the ping-pong table and the dining room table doubles as a computer work station. But still, Kevin thinks they got a good deal.

"I think we're a family that honestly set out to do a little bit of good. And we are doing a little bit of good, but the good we did for ourselves, I think, in some ways dwarfs⁹ the good for mankind or for other humans on this planet," he says.

In thinking about philanthropy, Kevin says his family is committed to the idea of half, in part because it is easy to measure.

"I think a lot of us look at the world and say, 'I ought to be doing more.' But 'more' is such a mushy and amorphous¹⁰ concept that we end up being paralyzed by it. And so, what we decided¹¹ to do is say, 'Look, half is completely measurable.'"

 The power of half

Since their book was published earlier this year, the Salwens have been touring the country, appearing on television and speaking at schools and libraries about the power of half. The response has been positive, they say, and they're looking forward to seeing others start their own 'half' projects.

Hannah says it's something anyone can do. "Everyone has more than enough of something they could sacrifice," she says.

Father and daughter have written a book, "The Power of Half", they hope will inspire others. "Obviously not many people are going to sell their house," Hannah admits, "but there are so many things, so many opportunities that you can be a part of. If your family watches four hours of TV a week you could cut that down to two and use those two hours to help in a homeless shelter."

Hannah was delighted. "It felt really good to know that if [my brother and I] had something to say, that my parents would be listening and that they would actually take it into consideration and not just say, 'Okay they don't know what they're talking about because… whatever.'" Hannah remembers that moment clearly. "I said 'I don't want to be a family that just talks about doing something. I want to really get out there and I want to make a difference.'"
 

1 mansion   

n.大厦，大楼；宅第

参考例句：

• The old mansion was built in 1850.这座古宅建于1850年。
• The mansion has extensive grounds.这大厦四周的庭园广阔。

2 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

3 palatial   

adj.宫殿般的，宏伟的

参考例句：

• Palatial office buildings are being constructed in the city.那个城市正在兴建一些宫殿式办公大楼。
• He bought a palatial house.他买了套富丽堂皇的大房子。

4 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

5 lame   

adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的

参考例句：

• The lame man needs a stick when he walks.那跛脚男子走路时需借助拐棍。
• I don't believe his story.It'sounds a bit lame.我不信他讲的那一套。他的话听起来有些靠不住。

6 facetiously   

adv.爱开玩笑地；滑稽地，爱开玩笑地

参考例句：

• The house had been facetiously named by some waggish officer. 这房子是由某个机智幽默的军官命名的。 来自辞典例句
• I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit. 我有时候也曾将起因全部可笑地推在却利？福罗萨的身上。 来自辞典例句

7 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

8 futures   

n.期货，期货交易

参考例句：

• He continued his operations in cotton futures.他继续进行棉花期货交易。
• Cotton futures are selling at high prices.棉花期货交易的卖价是很高的。

9 dwarfs   

n.侏儒，矮子（dwarf的复数形式）vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• Shakespeare dwarfs other dramatists. 莎士比亚使其他剧作家相形见绌。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The new building dwarfs all the other buildings in the town. 新大楼使城里所有其他建筑物都显得矮小了。 来自辞典例句

10 amorphous   

adj.无定形的

参考例句：

• There was a weakening of the intermolecular bonds,primarily in the amorphous region of the polymer.分子间键合减弱，尤其在聚合物的无定形区内更为明显。
• It is an amorphous colorless or white powder.它是一种无定形的无色或白色粉末。

11 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。