Project Vision 21

Several years ago, my daughter came home from school with a catalogue of items to sell, probably magazine subscriptions of wrapping paper. Doing what she was told to do at school, she went door to door around our block selling those items.

A couple of hours later, she came back home with more than $200 for all the sells she had made. I congratulated her for her accomplishment and I told you she did something many people find difficult to do.

Her answer was one of those phrases I hoopoe to remember for the rest of my life: “I didn’t know I couldn’t do it.”

The blissful ignorance of her own limitations and of the difficulties of the task led her to accomplish what other people, even with more experience, would have found difficult to do in the time she did it.

I recently remember my daughter’s answer when I met Ramon, a Latino immigrant and construction worker.

In spite of his evident limited formal education and undeniable lack of resources, Ramon, working alone and without the support of any group or organization, has transformed the lives of more than 30 Latino families in northern Colorado.

He told me that several month ago, tired of a living a less than model life, he went to a local church looking for help. That day, he said, his life completely changed. He left his previous immoral behavior, he reconciled with his family, and he decided to help other immigrant workers like him.

Ramon did not join any congregation, did not requested any payment to do what he is doing, did not call a “professional,” did not ask for money or for a translator, and did not enroll in any class or institute.

Ramon simply saw a need and in his own time and with his own money and efforts he began to help those who every day face powerful and destructive challenges and temptations, as he did in the past and he still does.

While others wait until having a college degree, an official authorization, an approved business plan and budget, enough human resources, good facilities (computers and Internet included) and who knows how many more things before doing something, Ramon, with none of those things, is improving the life of dozens of persons every single day.

I am ashamed knowing what he does and what I don’t do.

None of my degrees, stories, columns or contracts, and none of the efforts of many educated people I know, have ever touched in such a positive way so many families as Ramon did it in such a short time.

A famous president of Argentina once said, “It is better to do something that to just say something and it is better to fulfill a promise than to just make a promise.” Ramon doesn’t say things or makes promises. He accomplish things.

Perhaps precisely because he doesn’t know his own limitations or the enormity of the task, he keeps changing lives day after day.