There is, as you may know, homelessness in East Hampton Town. I often see a woman, possessions neatly packed into a nearby shopping cart, at one of a few locations in the village, and have taken to giving her whatever few dollars I’m carrying, and, when we are near a market, a sandwich or a salad.
What is this faintly familiar feeling? “Giving is recognized as a virtue in every major religion and in every civilized society, and it clearly benefits both the giver and the receiver,” His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama wrote, on Twitter, earlier this year. “The one who receives is relieved from the pangs of want. The one who gives can take comfort from the joy their gift brings to others.”
That’s it! Giving. Not burden, rather opportunity; shifting one’s awareness to that point of view might produce greater impact than the very modest handful of cash I’ve given to someone less fortunate, or to the Bowery Mission to provide meals to the needy on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I happened to meet Joff Sharpe at the Maidstone in East Hampton on Oct. 22. Mr. Sharpe had just arrived from London, I think, and asked me about this place.
What came to mind was “the Hamptons” as microcosm of the country: an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and even the rich and super-rich, on crude and ostentatious display from May to September. Pandemic-related changes aside, much of the South Fork’s housing stock remains vacant for much of the year, while the less fortunate crowd into substandard housing, and some have no housing at all.
I was at the Maidstone because I’d had the good fortune, two weeks earlier, to meet Eric Dahler and Dhardra Blake, of the charter yacht Kingfisher, during the pianist Judy Carmichael’s book-signing party at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. They’d told me about an upcoming event, a fund-raiser for Thinking Huts.
There, I met Maggie Grout, the founder of Thinking Huts, who provided a greatly expanded vision for giving. All of 23 years old, Ms. Grout, born in a rural village in China and adopted at 18 months, is on a mission to increase global access to education by building 3-D-printed schools in developing countries, where they are needed most.
“Globally, over 290 million students are prevented from attending school due to overcrowding, travel distance, and lack of infrastructure,” according to the organization’s website. “We seek to close the global education opportunity gap through innovative, humanitarian-driven tech solutions that increase access to necessary education infrastructure.”
Having been adopted from a poor, rural village, “I can relate to the people we’re serving in the communities in Madagascar,” Ms. Grout told me after the event. “From a young age, I knew this was what I was destined to do, because education is at the root of solving other problems in the world.”
One of these problems, I learned from a reading of “2040: A Handbook for the Regeneration” by Damon Gameau, is the population overshoot that threatens our survival. Mr. Gameau quotes the environmental activist Paul Hawken, who tells him that around 98 million girls “are kept out of school after a certain level and put to work to earn money to put their brothers through school. Or for early marriage.” Those girls tend to go on to bear five-plus children, whereas those who attend school and matriculate to the high-school level have an average of two-plus children.
Mr. Hawken goes on to say that “completing the education of those 98 million girls would make a significant difference to population growth,” to the tune of 1.1 billion fewer people on the planet. It’s neither coercive nor controlling, he says. Rather, it’s “empowering girls to be who they want to be.”
Ms. Grout recalled, at age 15, expressing frustration to her father that, while many say they want to help, “no one was coming up with solutions, especially for schools, where there is no infrastructure at all” in poor countries. “Then Dad said, ‘Did you see, they’re using 3-D printing on an architectural scale. They will use it for housing.’ I asked, could we use that for schools, to fill the gap more quickly, as well?”
“The use of 3-D printing to create schools is all about speed and scale,” Mr. Sharpe said in an email. “Madagascar’s lack of education infrastructure contributes to widespread illiteracy and only radical action will solve this problem. By leveraging 3-D technology, we can construct a cyclone-proof structure in around two weeks which makes rapid roll-out possible, so that we can start to have an impact on the current generation of Malagasy schoolchildren.” At the same time, a sustainable model will require partnerships with teachers and providers of learning materials.
“In the longer term, our goal is to ensure that no child lacks a comfortable learning environment within a reasonable distance of their home.” This will extend beyond Madagascar, “limited only by the generosity of those able to support our efforts.”
“A sense of concern for others gives our lives meaning; it is the root of all human happiness,” says the Dalai Lama, who is considered a living Buddha of compassion. With that in mind, I will go to thinkinghuts.org, where there is a “donate now” button.
—
Christopher Walsh is a senior writer at The East Hampton Star.