Dan Morrison’s Story
A defining monent in life changes a person forever. When a person encourages others to create a defining moment in themselves and others, he becomes a citizen diplomat. In my life that person is Dan Morrison.
Dan is the CEO and Founder of Citizen Effect, an amazing agency that identifies communities in need throughout the world and calls ordinary citizens to create fundraising projects to help those communities. It is 21st century philanthropy at work. No longer do you need to send your check to a large charity and hope your dollars are doing some good. The concept that Dan created is to raise the money yourself with the help of your family, friends and colleagues using all the tools that Citizen Effect provides for you. I am no Bill Gates, but my friends and I organized a ChiliFest in Chicago that raised almost $10,000 for a community in India in critical need of water. Our partnership with the village provided money for construction of a new well so women would not have to walk 5 hours a day for clean water. The funds also provided for the construction of sanitation facilities and a rainwater collection system. We are so gratified that the money we raised was immediately used to buy the materials. We are delighted that the projects were built by the villagers themselves.
We communicated with the villagers through progress reports, pictures and phone calls. We feel we have made new friends. Our lives and our Indian friends lives have been defined in new ways. In fact we feel so enriched by our work with Dan, we are going to his website (www.citizeneffect.org) to choose a new project. Thank you Dan. You are truly our citizen diplomat.