Shaun in the City

Joe Paterno died this morning.

For 50 years, he was a god of college football.  He may be the best college football coach of all time.   While coach, he not only won more games than anybody, but his Penn State team produced 250 NFL players, went undefeated 5 times, finished in the top 25 over 35 times, won 2 national championships… all while producing a score of academic all Americans and having one of the highest graduation rates of any football programs in the country – certainly better than any program that was actually good at football.

In this way, NONE of us are like Joe Paterno.  Not at all.  He was a once in a lifetime legend.  He was better than us.  Few, if any of us, are as good at what we do as he was good at what he did.  He was special.  And what was particularly special about him is that he was such an amazing coach and leader while looking and feeling like a regular dude.  That’s not easy.

He was so great that I think the ultimate story about him will eventually outshine the awful ugliness of a child molestation scandal that happened right under his nose, on his watch, by his coordinator, on his turf.  You know why I’m OK with this?

We are all Joe Paterno. 

Hundreds of thousands of children are molested right under our noses, on our watch, in our country, in other countries AND only a few people are out there fighting for them.  By few…I mean…a few.  They are rare.  They are as rare on the earth as Joe Paterno was rare on the football field.  This is tragic.

Sure – few of us may have someone that we are supervising do what Jerry Sandusky has been accused of doing to kids on the campus of Penn State, but I don’t think that absolves us from the real responsibility of advocating and fighting on behalf of victimized kids everywhere.

We know it’s happening.  We know they’re being raped.  We know they’re being forced to do unthinkable things.  We know they’re being bought and sold like property in record numbers all over the world.  We are all witnesses to what some people say is the height of human trafficking in the history of the world.

But we’re all too busy, too frightened, too overwhelmed, full of too many excuses to help even one child escape abuse.  You may be coming up with an excuse right now as to why you are not like Joe Paterno, but you are.  If JoePa is ugly, then you are ugly. Does that make it right? Of course not.  We’re all wrong and we are all missing the mark on this issue – just like Joe Paterno.

Joe Paterno passed the responsibility of standing up for victimized children off to other people at Penn State.  Legally – that’s just fine, but morally he dropped the ball and his legacy will pay a real price for this.  However, you and I pass this ball like a hot potato every single day.  While we wait for other people to free slaves, while we wait for other people to stand against perpetrators of sex crimes against kids, while we wait… more kids are harmed…on our watch.

If it is true that Joe Paterno is a bad man for not doing more (and maybe it is), then it is true for all of us.  It smacks of self-righteousness for us to blast him for not doing enough to protect children from abuse, because you know, and I know, that we aren’t doing enough either.  Even today, people have told me “Shaun. If I was Joe Paterno, I would have done something to stand up for those kids.”

The truth is that you don’t know what you would do if you were Joe Paterno because you are not Joe Paterno.  In general, I find that people greatly exaggerate what they would do under the greatest pressure.  You don’t have to worry what you would have done if you were Joe, but you and I have a chance to risk it all to stand up for kids that are being abused TODAY and we aren’t.

That’s the cold hard truth.

Thank you!

So far 424 of my friends have pledged just about $50,000 in our revolutionary KickStarter campaign to BUILD HOPE all over the world!

I’m saying thank you in advance because I really need you to join them!  We estimate that it will take at least 1,000 people to hit our goal and we have just 29 days left to do it.  The KickStarter rules state that if we don’t hit our goal, we don’t get anything at all.

If that happens, I’ll sink into a deep depression so you are pretty much going to save my life by making a pledge today :-)  If you need more info, I am pleading my case beneath my name below…

THANKS!

Shaun

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I have never believed in something more than I believe in what we are building now @ HopeMob.com.  I honestly think that this platform is going to do more good, and help more people, in more places than anything I’ve ever done.  I want you to join us.  Below, I’m going to tell you all about our work!

• We’re launching HopeMob in full force in late March.

• We already have 1,100 amazing volunteers from 40 states in the US and 20 countries from 6 continents and we haven’t even launched yet.

• We are a 501c3.

• We were featured in Mashable, the most read tech blog in the world, last week.

• If you go here you can read a TON of details about what we’ll be doing and see a VIDEO of me talking about this project.

• We have a 12 page business plan that includes our 3 year BUDGET that we are offering to every BACKER of our project @ KickStarter.

• So far we’ve had people and companies pledge everything from $1 – $10,000 and each pledge level has amazing rewards!

Hey Everybody!

Wanted to share some really cool news!

• So far 407 people have helped us cross $38,000 in pledges. Later today we will receive $10,000 in matching funds from the great people @ CSG!  That will put us up to $48,000 w/ 31 days to go!

• We just crossed 400 backers!  I love it! We have people that have given from $1-$10,000!  We think we will need at least 1,000 backers to hit our goal and thanks to you we are on our way there!

• In the next day or so my friends @ Cause Media Group are going to announce another $10,000 matching grant!  How awesome is that?? We will need to raise $10,000 in new pledges to receive it!  Together I know we can do it!  When we hit $58k, their grant will put us @ $68k w/ about 24 days to go!

• We think we have one more partner that wants to come in for another $10,000 pledge.  Do you know ANYONE that might be interested? We have amazing prizes for them and I will gladly meet/speak/email/Skype with them to let them know what we’re all about!

This is hard work, but when we launch the best platform for HOPE the world has ever seen it will be well worth!

Thank you all again! Let’s keep pushing & let’s BUILD HOPE!

Shaun

(this post has not been edited for errors and was written from my iphone.)

No man or woman outside of Jesus has had a bigger impact & influence on me than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe he is the greatest person America has ever produced. Ever. Nobody has ever been more brilliant, more loving, more hopeful under the ugliest pressure imaginable in our country than him.

He stood up for the best traits in all of us. He fought courageously against evil and would be willing to stare it in its face over and over again.

Having gone to undergrad at his alma mater, Morehouse College, we all feel like a piece of Dr. King is in us. Did you know that he gave a great portion of his Nobel Prize reward to Morehouse? When I would walk around the campus I would sometimes imagine that I was walking on a sidewalk his life helped pay for.

At the end of his life, Dr. King’s popularity had greatly waned. He was fighting for poor people. That’s never popular. A society like ours, to its very core, counts on large volumes of people being very poor. You actually can’t have a society like ours without them. To have extremely rich people you must have extremely poor people. They will serve the food and take out the garbage.

In fact, Dr. King was fighting for garbage men the day he was murdered in Memphis.

I have Dr. King in mind as we build HopeMob and fight to unify people from all walks alive to come together and bring hope to those around the world that need it the most. With all of my heart I believe that HopeMob is the 2012 embodiment of his real dream.

Already we have over 1,100 volunteers from all walks of life, every race, every background, 40 states, 6 continents, coming together determined to make the world a better place. I don’t think anything in the whole world today looks more like his dream than what we are about to do and I am so amped I see the change we will bring to real people!

Would you please join me and make a pledge today? In our campaign to BUILD HOPE we don’t simply want you to join us years from now, we want people all over the world to say that they actually built this movement from the ground up!

I need you to make a pledge today of any size from $1 to $10,000! Nothing, not even a hold, is placed on your account until February 17th and even then it will only come out if we hit our final goal! Plus, several amazing donors are matching all pledges the next 10 days or so!

Let’s do this! Let’s build a modern movement of HOPE!!! Go now and see our revolutionary KickStarter campaign and join the movement!