By Dave Schweidenback
Fall 2020 Newsletter

This summer the Rolex Corporation collaborated with the Washington Post to interview Rolex Laureates and to put their stories on the Washington Post website. I was a Rolex Laureate in 2000, and was lucky enough to be selected for the new Rolex collaboration. This is the first major article about P4P for probably over a decade. Here is the article. I was ecstatic to hear the news.

I am featured with Reese Fernandez–Ruiz of Rags2Riches from the Philippines about waste recycling. The discussion was moderated by Jeff Kirschner from Litterati. We did a tremendous amount of preplanning over several weeks getting ready for interview. Jeff turned out to be an incredible moderator. The taped interview took place with Reese in the Philippines joining us at 8pm and Jeff and I in the United States at 8am. It was a great experience and I now have a friend and new P4P partner in the Philippines. We shipped 35 sewing machines to the Philippines on September 29th.

But the reason I am bringing all this up is that for the first time someone dragged out of me the answer to the question, Why do you do this? It’s amazing after 29 years I had never discovered the answer; it was buried very deep. I believe I had it on the tip of my tongue, banging around inside my head. When Jeff dragged it out of me, I was shocked. I have been stewing on my answer for about a week. I had no idea but now I know.

In 1959, when I was five years old, I watched my father die suddenly. He was an electrical engineer unifying all of the various small electrical generating stations on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, into one electrical grid. The life insurance was enough to pay off the mortgage on the house; and my mother, sister, brother, and I started living on Social Security and Veterans benefits. We basically went from an upper middle class family with a bright future to paupers. A great austerity came over the family. It was hard and continued so throughout my childhood.

So Jeff asked me, Why did you do this? From way down deep inside, ripped from my guts and my eyes tearing up, the answer was dragged from my mouth and I was shocked by it. Still today, a week or two after the event, I am shedding tears remembering my answer. It was the simplicity of the answer that shocked me along with the ferociousness of my belief in the answer.

So now I know why I changed the course of my life, created this organization, and have helped over 158,000 families in 43 different countries, countries north and south, east and west. Our mission is not about bikes; it’s about economic development: helping people to help themselves have a better life. I’ve not done it alone; many many people have come to my aid, including all you loyal supporters. So I’ll leave you here with my answer.

No kid should go hungry! That’s why. I never knew that that was my deep base reason. Now that I’ve figured that out, if I could just solve climate change!