What is Help? Real Help?

“One day we were driving across town, and my partner Mary Jane wanted me to pull over, so she could give some $ to a man down on his luck. I refused; MJ rebutted; and I drove by like a heartless brute. We both felt bad for different reasons.” Help is a big part of what makes us a social animal, so much so that we feel good when we help, and bad when we don’t.  ANSWER is how I discovered that helping children in need, helps us in our need to help. This is my journey over the potholes to giving.

Earle Canfield had everything: a model father, upper-class upbringing on Mercer Island, good education, travels, etc.  He had been to Nepal several times, volunteered in a children’s hospital as a physician assistant, and started sponsoring a  waif in a good school. Uma soared to the top of her class. He then  realized he was onto something, and he figured he would have enough to get by.  At 52, it was time to backfill and begin really helping others less fortunate, and so he retired and founded ANSWER…a unique, and highly successful nonprofit organization that has linked a thousand UUs in dozens of UU churches to 1600 bright, but highly disadvantaged children in 100 different schools across Nepal. Despite their impoverishment, the caste systems, civil war, a devastating earthquake and a pandemic, these children are proving to be some of the brightest in their country and are today taking up professional careers as doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, bankers, accountants, etc.