Fail Up by Tavis Smiley Read Free Book Online

children who have lost their parents to the HIV pandemic. Moya is a member of the Agape Children’s Choir. The film captures the children’s effort to produce a CD that they hoped would raise funds to build a new orphanage and buy better clothing and deliver other essentials.
    In the midst of rehearsing for a major concert and recording the CD in the summer of 2005, the orphanage caught fire and burned to the ground. Yet the children pressed on with producing their CD and clinging to the hope that someone, somewhere would hear their music and come to their rescue.
    Someone did.
    Keys, co-founder of Keep a Child Alive—an organization that provides life-saving anti-retroviral medications, care, education, and food to HIV-positive youth in South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and India—learned about the Agape Children’s Choir’s plight. She invited the children to perform in a fundraising concert in New York where she and Paul Simon were the headliners. Not only did the children raise enough money from the concert and CD sales to build a new orphanage; Keys’s foundation works to make sure the choir and the orphanage receive continuous support from all over the world.
    This group of children was not seeking handouts for themselves; they were trying to help others whose parents had died from the plague of HIV. Because they felt empowered to do for others, they were rewarded with international recognition and much-needed assistance.
    New programs that actually allow people to learn to help themselves and sustain their own lives and communities may be the 21st-century models that provide a genuine alternative to government dependency. Programs and projects like the Agape Children’s Choir aren’t seeking undeserved or unwarranted favors or handouts, just a hand-up to dignity and self-sufficiency. We’re talking about dependence versus independence, respect versus disrespect. When you respect and support human beings’ innate desire to do for self, you oftentimes find that people, including the indigent, are more than ready to operate in their own self-interest.
    You don’t have to be impoverished to have an indigent attitude. Our relationships and friendships should be of value to us; why risk them by asking for favors all the time? Of course, setting boundaries in relationships can clearly save you a lot of grief down the road. But why lose a good friend because you stepped into the begs-too-much territory? A safeguard is to make sure you always give before you get. Be it in your personal or business life, reciprocity is sweeter when the exchange of services, favors, or goods is mutual.
    Big Jim illustrated that there’s a never-ending price to pay when you ask, plead, or expect special privileges and undeserved access. The hookup comes with follow-up requests that oftentimes outweigh the initial favor. You should always seek independence and autonomy, do for self, and insist on paying your own way—if you can.
    And if you can’t, perhaps you should do without—until you can.

CHAPTER 4
    YOU’RE
ALWAYS ON
    E verything was copacetic. We had about 15 minutes before BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley went on the air live from Washington, DC. The lights, monitors, and microphones were cued, and my questions were at the ready. I was told my guest—director, writer, and actor Robert Townsend—had arrived at the California studio. The plan was to discuss his new film, B.A.P.S (Black American Princesses) , starring Halle Berry. I was looking forward to an engaging conversation about the new film and other matters.
    â€œYo, Tavis, you seen the movie; how was it?” a crew member asked.
    Now, I love Townsend’s work. Hollywood Shuffle, The Five Heartbeats — great movies. B.A.P.S , on the other hand: hated it!
    â€œMan, the movie was so horrible. It was the worst piece of sh** I have ever seen in my life,” I told my crew, adding, “and what I