The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun Read Free Book Online Page A

I wanted to enjoy it, but as we scraped the excess into the trash, all I could think about was how many people went to sleep hungry in the places I’d just visited.
    That night my brother, Scott, who had become the top nightclub promoter in Atlanta, insisted that we go clubbing in South Beach to celebrate my return. I hadn’t even been back on US soil for more than ten hours, but we went to the Miami hot spot Skybar. Beautiful, scantily dressed women waved sparklers and danced around carrying enormous $5,000 bottles of Dom Pérignon. Their performance eerily resembled the religious ceremonies I had seen over the past few months, but in the Candomblé ceremonies of Brazil and Cao Dai temples of Vietnam, people were celebrating life, not bottles of alcohol. I could feel myself judging those around me, which wasn’t fair because they hadn’t seen what I’d seen, nor had I lived a day in their shoes.
    No matter how hard I tried, though, I knew that this feeling wouldn’t go away until I traveled again. I had grown so much in my time abroad, but it seemed as if life at home had pretty much stayed the same. It felt as if I were back in my childhood bedroom; I knew everything so well that I could find the light switch in the dark, but I no longer fit in the surroundings once everything wasilluminated. My parents had always told me that when it came to travel “we’ll support you, just not financially,” so I hatched a plan to get back on the open road.
    *  *  *
    After working multiple jobs through May and June, I had enough money to backpack on a shoestring budget through July and August. With my friend Luke, I started in Europe, where we lived on cheap sandwiches in well-traveled tourist hot spots like Paris, Vienna, and Prague. But we also visited more remote cities like Bratislava, Slovakia, and Split, Croatia, just to chase adventures off the beaten path. In these distant locations we often met the kindest people, who took us into their homes. In Dubrovnik, Croatia, we stayed with an elderly couple we met at the bus station. After telling them how much we missed homemade breakfasts, they placed warm bread, scrambled eggs, and fresh-squeezed juice in the kitchen for us each morning. These treats lifted our spirits and reminded us that even on the road you can find strangers who can make you feel like family. The food was certainly delicious, but the gesture showed us that kindness cannot be evaluated in dollars and cents. The only way to measure it is in the weight of compassion that the act itself carries forward into the life of another.
    Following my time in Europe, I spent the rest of the summer backpacking through Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia with my SAS friend Dennis and his college roommate, Zach. The futuristic feel of Singapore and gorgeous beaches of Thailand did not disappoint. In Cambodia, we were hosted by Scott Neeson, a tough-willed Australian and a former film executive who oversaw the release of some of the top movies of all time, including Titanic and X-Men .
    A few years before, Scott had visited Steung Meanchey, a notoriousgarbage dump in Phnom Penh, where several thousand of the region’s poorest kids were living in squalor. After recognizing that his help wasn’t doing enough from afar, Scott walked away from his life in Hollywood. He sold his house and Porsche and moved alone to Cambodia to create the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF), which provides housing, education, food, and life-skills training for kids in the most impoverished communities.
    The organization was small, nimble, and run by someone I deeply connected with. On several occasions I walked with Scott through Steung Meanchey. The smells of garbage were overwhelming, but everyone seemed to know him, and he chatted with multiple families about the need to bring their children to the CCF for medical attention. The services he provided were to children who desperately needed help, and he had a personal relationship with those