How Did it Start?
My motivation for doing my work is this – years ago I asked myself the question “what do I know for sure?” I wished I could give a spiritual, religious or philosophical answer, but I couldn’t find one that I felt with any real conviction. The one conviction I do have is that the poverty and need I saw with my own eyes in developing countries is the most real thing I have ever witnessed. I know as an undeniable fact that this project benefits those I have reached through my work. Having this opportunity to help people, save lives and create brighter futures has brought me real fulfillment. This work brings meaning to my life. If I can die knowing I have been able to help some needy fellow human beings, then that is enough for me.
The project began in 1989, when I visited India for the first time. I began thinking about going to Asia to help people in 1956 when I was 7 years old, influenced by my father, Albert Gold (Benefit Magazine 100 Friends story, September 2007). He gave me me many issues of National Geographic Magazine and from a very young age I dreamt of traveling to Asia.
Here’s the story as I told it to a reporter:
Gold recalled the first time (1957) his father had a talk with him about the meaning of life. Al Gold was recovering from a heart attack; his son was eight years old. “’I’m too young to talk about stuff like the meaning of stuff,’” Marc recalled saying.
Nevertheless, his father marched him in the bathroom and stood him on the toilet, so Marc could see himself in the mirror. “Then he asked: ‘How old will you be in 70 years?’ ’78,’ I said.
Then he said: ‘When you are 78, I want you to look at yourself in the mirror again and ask yourself: What have you accomplished in your one and only life?' How will you make the world a better place
Marc was perplexed. “’What am I going to do to make the world better?’ I asked. My dad told me: ’You figure it out, it's not hard. Shoes. Education. Clothes. Jobs. Medicine.’”
Marc did figure it out, and his father (who passed away in 1964) would be proud. Fascinated with Asian cultures, Marc took his first trip to India in the late 1980s. His experiences there changed his life and turned him into what he calls a “Shoestring Philanthropist.”
On his first trip to India, Gold met a woman who was on the verge of dying from an ear infection. She needed antibiotics, but could not afford them. Gold purchased the medicine for her—for $1—and saved her life. For another $30 he purchased a hearing aid that restored her hearing. He was shocked to learn that something so important could be accomplished with so little.
Overwhelmed by how so little money could make such a difference in the lives of people he met on that trip, he resolved to return with more money to help the needy. Although Gold, formerly a community college professor with young children didn’t have much spare cash, he did have friends—100 of them. He asked each of them for a modest donation…and so 100 Friends was born.
That was in 1989. Since then, Gold said, he has carried out more than 60 humanitarian missions in over 30 countries in the Developing World. Gold has built schools for as little as $1,500 and libraries for $500. He has distributed wheelchairs to the disabled in Vietnam (recently 500 of them for $500) and needed medicines to hospitals in India, sometimes supplying an entire village hospital for as little as $600.
He has also helped many young girls in Nepalese villages who are at risk of being sold into sexual slavery by paying for their schooling and for supplies and food for their families. The cost? About $160 for each girl per year, he said.
Recently, he helped some girls in Vietnam who had been trafficked and then rescued from China: Read the article HERE
Yet for Gold, it is not about numbers; it’s about the people, and the happiness on the faces of those he helps—like the many Filipino children living in garbage dumps he is able to send to school, giving them a chance at a better life; or the poor mothers Gold is able to help set up in their own businesses.
Gold acknowledges that there are too many people to help. Once he actually talked with Mother Teresa about how little he felt he could do in the face of such overwhelming needs.
“Do you know how to swim?” she asked him. When he told her he did, she replied: “If a boat sank and 100 people were on it and were going to drown, what would you do?” “I would try to save as many as I could,” he said. “Start swimming,” Mother Teresa replied. She got up and walked away and I never saw her again.