It’s nearly 2025 and I wonder, lovely readers, what you imagine for the world and your own personal goals for the new year. I hope you establish health and wellbeing plans for yourself.
This story’s purpose is to inspire and support my good Aussie friends Dr Mehmet Yildiz and Dr Mike Broadly and the new #RippleEffect2025 writing challenge (please see Dr. Y’s story here, and Mike’s story on this topic here).
Recently, I discovered some local statistics (again) that gave me pause about the new year. In the period between 2016 and 2020, 33.5% of children in Georgia lived in single-parent families. Approximately one in four children live without a father in the home — nearly 40% of kids don’t have a dad.
The global numbers are far more heartbreaking, with poverty, homelessness, and starvation. As a father living in Atlanta, Georgia, these statistics shake my soul. I speak with my son nearly every day and I cannot imagine not being in his life.
Having a father-mentor and a stable home life help with:
Drug and alcohol abuse
Health and emotional problems
School truancies
Poverty
Crime
Teen pregnancies
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) is a global leader in youth mentoring, serving communities across all 50 states and 12 countries. With a mission to empower children through one-on-one mentoring relationships, BBBSA helps young people unlock their potential and achieve brighter futures. This impactful work is made possible by the generosity of dedicated volunteers, passionate donors, and invaluable financial contributions.
Although I’d heard of BBBS before, reading the statistics made me want to get involved. I’ve sponsored a child before through Save the Children, but since I moved back to Atlanta, I wanted to reach out locally to embrace my community.
I’d like to share with you my experience mentoring a nine-year-old boy (“Little” in BBBS terms) through BBBS and motivate you, as a writer or reader, to get involved in 2025 to help change the world with one slight gesture of your choosing.
It doesn’t have to be children. A $25 donation to a charity of your choice feeds an entire family or more. Old furniture and clothes fill the living rooms of folks reestablishing life after the streets and keep families warm. People need things we take for granted.
I want to highlight that currently, in sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 250 million people face hunger daily. Children die from malnutrition, and parents are forced to make impossible choices between feeding their families or paying for medicine. — Dr Mehmet Yildiz
Wally, my Little through BBBS, is a sweet, precocious child that I’ve known for over a year. He loves science and math and is smart as a whip. We see each other one to three times per month, seeing movies, go bowling, doing TopGolf, or go hiking. Sometimes he just comes to my place and we hang out making paper airplanes or watching movies or watching spiders spin their webs.
In all of this, my time with Wally is foremost to be his friend and someone he can talk to about anything. My role is not to replace a father, but to supplement his life with advice and support. Children need and crave this type of mentorship.
On our very first outing together, Wally assisted me in my charity kitchen, Food4Lives, preparing food for hundreds of Atlanta’s homeless. Much to his mother’s chagrin, I gave him a knife and told him to chop carrots and potatoes (he did fine, with no missing fingers).
Later, we served food downtown and Wally relished handing out meals to kids his age living on the streets. He served food he helped prepare to kids his own age that were unsheltered.
Wally was deeply affected. “Tim? I really like handing out food. What happens if we weren’t here?” he asked one day.
“Well, many of these people would be very hungry.”
Through his eyes, I knew he had more questions and that he didn’t understand homelessness, especially with the children he met. And in my heart, I knew I didn’t have an answer for further questions.
Wally later shared that it was the best experience he ever had. He has served with me countless Saturdays now and always asks when we go next.
This message is what this challenge is all about. I will see Wally graduate from high school and college, and he will always remember his mornings in the kitchen for the rest of his life.
Chances are in our favor that Wally grows up to be an outstanding, caring adult who passes on what we’ve instilled in him. Small gestures. Ripples of impact.
If you are a writer, you’re welcome to join this writing challenge. If you are a reader, join the conversation, motivate others, and share this challenge on your social media and with friends.
Let’s make a ripple effect in 2025 to reduce suffering from poverty, or just to make a slight gesture of kindness. As Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita and Jesus and Buddha understood, Seva is why we are on this earth.
Tag your article with #RippleEffect2025 to join us and help bring this hopeful message into the digital realm. We trust Medium supports such stories in 2025 as a medium for change.
I thank all of you and wish you a healthy and joyous New Year.
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