Hal Donaldson
speaker
57 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Aug 2024
Hal Donaldson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, you know, people ask me that. They say, what's the secret sauce? How has it gone from the back of a pickup truck to being, I think we're actually number 35 on Forbes list? You know, I can honestly tell you that I believe vision is incremental. You know, it's just doing the right thing, doing the opportunistic thing. Opportunities come your way, doing it and doing it well.
And just building upon that, I don't know that 30 years ago that we had this massive strategic plan that it was going to be, you know, something this large. It really was just responding to needs. You know, I'm a person of faith, and so I believe that God puts needs in front of you, and it gives you opportunities to respond to those needs. And the same for your listeners.
As they go through their daily life, when they encounter someone who's hurting, someone who's lonely, it's as simple as that. And I really think that's been the story of Convoy of Hope. We've just responded to needs for 30 years and tried to do it in a way that helps people maintain their dignity. You know, we feed nearly 600,000 children every day around the world.
About 50,000 women and girls go through our jobs training, our teaching every year. We have 25, 30,000 farmers that go through training. so that they can increase their yields. It wasn't a big plan. It was just like, hey, here's an opportunity. Let's step into it. Let's do the best job we can, see where it takes us.
And I know that's probably not a good business model, but it's certainly how we've grown. You're doing something right.
Yeah. Well, as you know, Gary, I have a book and it's entitled, What Really Matters? How to Care for Yourself and Serve a Hurting World. And my hope is that people will learn from my mistakes. Because in the early days, I was so passionate about helping people escape poverty. Again, because of my upbringing.
And when I saw poverty in the lives of other people, I just, you know, I want to do everything I can. And I found myself really traveling all over the world, all over the United States, spending 150 nights, 200 nights away from home. I had four small daughters. And so, you know, I think I had reckless ambition, much like my grandfather. I was abusing my family. because I wasn't there.
And when I was there, sure. I mean, I took good care of them. I told my kids bedtime stories. I tucked them in. I did everything that a loving father should do. But there's something to be said about time and time away. You know, it hit me probably about the age of 50, it really hit me that I had paid too great a price. I was making sacrifices I didn't need to make.
Those sacrifices were time, they were finances, they were health. And you tell yourself, you know what, I can sacrifice sleep, I can sacrifice nutrition, I can sacrifice et cetera, et cetera, because I'm doing such a good work around the world. But what I discovered is that when you take care of yourself, that's not a selfish deed.
That's actually a selfless thing because it enables you to help more people. And not to operate from this constant deficit. That's huge. What was it? Was there a health scare? Yeah, I was sitting at my desk and I had a short pain in my back. And I thought, okay, well, this feels like it might be a kidney stone. And so I left work, drove home. It didn't get any better.
I told my wife, I said, hey, I think you need to take me to emergency. They need to give me something to pass the stone. And here I am with... a blood pressure cuff on my arm. And all of a sudden, the nurse said, this isn't a kidney stone. I think you're on the verge of a heart attack. And I just couldn't believe it.
Next thing I know, I'm being strapped to a gurney and rushed into surgery, and they put two stents in my heart. That was a wake-up call. I literally came out of that surgery. And at the time, I was writing books. I was traveling and speaking a lot. I was working as the editor-in-chief of an international magazine. I was trying to do it all.
I was on like eight boards, board of directors of different organizations around the country, major organizations. I stepped off every one of them, and I quit two of my jobs, and I gave my life and my focus to Convoy of Hope, and that proved to be a very good decision.
yeah it's grown what is the convoy mission today and has it changed at all over the years is it is it more encompassing than just making sure they're fed yes especially i would say like in the u.s like we do these city-wide festivals where we actually go in and provide free medical and dental care job fairs we help people prepare a resume we uh
provide them with groceries we have things for kids we have new shoes and give them clothes and the list goes on it's a full menu of services here's what we've discovered in the united states is that no one has a monopoly on compassion that if you come in and you're neutral you can bring you can bring churches civic groups government and businesses all together to touch their city
Often, they're working apart, and we've found that it's amazing to see them work together to make their communities a better place to live. Internationally, one of the things we found, we started with a feeding program of children, but we found that the mothers of these children would come to bring their kids, and they would just hang around all day while these kids were in school.
We feed the kids in school because that keeps them in school. You don't feed them in school, parents have them out on street corners begging or scavenging off of garbage heaps. You know, convoy typically what we'll do is we'll provide one meal a day at school, at lunch. And then for the weekends, they'll take home rations for their family.
But what we found was that the mothers were hanging around. And so we said, well, what if we started a job training program for the mothers so that We don't have to feed their kids. They're feeding their own kids. And every year, 50,000 women go through the program.
Yeah, I think, you know, our goal is not to go to a community and stay. Our goal is to go to a community and make sure that community is healthy and then leave to go to another community. And so one example would be in Nepal following earthquake some years ago.
Convoy Hope came in and we began working with the farmers to really expand their yield and to show them what other crops they could be growing that would be financially lucrative for them. And over the course of a couple of years, we were able to bring that community back to health. We had a feeding program for kids, but they began feeding themselves and began feeding their own kids.
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