GoodNews Florida

I have declined most of them. I’m only involved with Life the Life. And we really want to be very intentional as using it as a showcase to show how nonprofits don’t have to be on a beg- ging budget… There has got to be a better way to solve that. Omar (Aleman) and I talked during Ministry Ventures (an educational program on establishing best practices for non- profits) and proposed a completely different way of going about and doing God’s work. We also have a group of guys that we meet every Friday morning for Bible study, and we’ve been really trying to crack the nut of how do you marry business with nonprofits to where you can get the nonprofits to be excellent at what they do, but be totally transparent and totally self-sufficient. GN - What are some of the Christian nonprofits you are working with? WD - I’ve done a lot of projects in Central America to give back to some of the countries we’ve done business with. I’ve done a lot of sustainable projects with Food for the Poor. I am more intentional; apart from the local charities we do a lot of work overseas. One of the guys that I really connected with when I went through Lifework Leadership was Brian Mc- Neely with Global Refuge. The work they do is amazing, and we do support them. They go into conflict areas. They take the refugees in the camps and train them to be doctors and nurses and take care of the population in the camps… And then we do stuff on our own. I’ve got a scholarship program in Guatemala we’ve developed that came out of a project we funded… It was a real treat last year we went down and they hosted a dinner for us with some of the graduates… The most impacting story was this young lawyer who said, “When I was 10-years-old I was shoe shining in my village,” and now he’s a lawyer. And their heart and their struggle is nothing short of phenomenal, so whatever we do to help put them through their careers is really meaningless compared with their struggle… And we build houses at the garbage dump. They wanted to name the place after us, and I said, “no.” So, they called it City of Hope. Building the homes at the garbage dump has transformed the lives of the people from just having a house, now they're looking for a job. GN - Who should attend Lifework Leadership? And what would you say to someone considering the program? WD - Lifework Leadership was originally designed for true business owners, leaders and innovators. Now there are some middle managers who are going through the program. But the quality of the speakers and the interactions among the tables and groups within Lifework Leadership is a combination you can’t duplicate. If you go through it, it will rock your world. (Continued from page 40 )