I was meandering about campus last week when an attractive young woman from one of our upstanding student activist organizations approached me. To be honest, I was only half listening to her standardized speech, the same thing I’ve heard millions of times before:
“We want you to buy this blank, so that we can help blank do blank.”

I commended her for her gracious deed and apologetically declined, mostly because I have a tendency to only carry 50 rubles. In spite of my utmost sincerity, she proceeded to condemn me for allowing whatever senseless act she was trying to stop continue, faulting me for some sort of genocide.

This had a negative effect on the remainder of my day. I pondered the words of Edmund Burke who said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Was my apathy perpetuating something horrible in some other part of the world?

The thought reminded me of last October. I had been working for a good four hours on a small two bedroom home in Mfuleni, just outside of Cape Town, South Africa. A local about my age sat with me. His father once told him that every moment he didn’t work was a moment the apartheid had won.

“But those times have passed,” he said. “You need to take time to enjoy the sun. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

My mother has always told me the story of the man and the starfish, where a man throws starfish from a beach completely littered with them into the ocean, one at a time. He knows that he cannot throw them all back, but if he can save a few, he knows that he has succeeded.

I may not be able to stop genocide in Darfur or find a cure for malaria, but a deaf couple in Mfuleni has a roof over their heads that they couldn’t pay for, preschool students in Forest Home, Belize, have a building that doesn’t blow away every fall and three children can go to school with smiles on their faces as my hair hangs over their chemo-stricken brows.

I have met many students here who have done similar deeds and carry those deeds with them humbly in the back of their minds. They have come to accept that they have accomplished great good, but are reasonable in understanding what they can and cannot do. Every time they can’t give a dollar or buy a bracelet doesn’t mean they’re in the wrong. It means they’re like me, with 50 rubles in my pocket and an old water bottle full of loose change with the words “Africa or Bust” written on it.

After serving on the board of directors for a non-profit working to build schools in sub-Saharan Africa, I know how difficult it is to come up with an effective way to market a non-profit and make money for a cause.

My advice to everyone is to believe in the power of positive thinking and reinforcement. It is likely that I will never direct my funds toward the group that approached me or any other group that condemns me for allowing a problem to continue. I know there are problems, but I must be realistic. We all must do the very best we can while acknowledging our limitations.