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[Music] welcome I'm Stu fredman I'm a faculty member at the Wharton School and we're
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here today with Kevin and Hannah soln who are going to be speaking with us about their incredible story uh which is
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captured in their wonderful book called The Power of half it's a story of how
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this family decided to sell their mansion in Atlanta and donate the proceeds of that sale after moving to a
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house half the value uh to the hunger project in uh in support of uh development work in
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Ghana welcome Kevin welcome Hannah thanks so much for being here today yeah great to see you why did you do this
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um well this one day I was um riding in the car with my dad and um we stopped at
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a really familiar stoplight and I looked to my left and I saw a homeless man holding up a sign said Homeless please
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help really typical scene that You' pretty much see anywhere and then um I looked to my right and I saw a man in a
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Mercedes Coupe and I kind of toggled back and forth between the halves and the have knots of the situation and I
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said to my dad you know Dad if that man in the Mercedes didn't have such a nice
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car then the man over here the homeless man could have a meal and my dad thought
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about it for a second and then he said yeah but you know if we didn't have such
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a nice car then that man could have a meal so that night when we went home we kind of talked to my mom and brother
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about it um my mom kind of in a fit of frustration said well what do you want to do you want to sell the house and I
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said yeah that is what I want to do um so that is what we did wow now that must have been uh a
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very difficult decision for you uh as a family to make and and as you tell so compellingly in the in the book uh it it
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really was quite a struggle for you to come up with a way to decide how to do that as a family and it and it really
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did transform your family in terms of uh you're having to identify what matters
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most to you and where you where you're going to invest your your your resources
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so tell us about the the process of decision-making that led you to actually go through with this impulsive idea well
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you know we spent a lot of time in our in all of our lives thinking about how do I invest money to make more money but
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we our family had never really spent a lot of time thinking about how do we invest money in order to make change in
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the world and to make a difference and so that was a process that we sort of had to invent as we went forward with
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this and what we did was we'd get together basically every Sunday over bagels and coffee and as a forsome you
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know the the two kids and the two adults we would research we would go through you know discussions about a series of
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issues in the world ranging from sexism to lack of Education to lack of water to
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Poverty to really start to understand our values first and figure out okay how did we want to actually invest our money
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and it was a process that my wife essentially invented as we went through this and and um by the end of close to a
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year of discussing researching and then voting and that's you know an important
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part of this was we voted one person one vote and I can get into that yes um you
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know but but we decided you know we wanted to work in Africa because in part because we were working we were already
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working in the US a lot um we wanted to you as a family were already doing work here yes yes and and it was and you know
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that was um you know we decided we wanted to work in Africa we wanted to work with an organization that was very
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entrepreneurial we wanted to work with an organization that was very Grassroots anyway there were a whole series of
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criteria that we that our year of research took us to and the hunger project was the organization we decided
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to work with now you said uh one person one vote that that's uh one of the more
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striking aspects of the story is your decision ultimately as parents to create a kind of collective decisionmaking
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where each of the four of you had equal voice yeah it was crazy wasn't it I mean
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I mean you know I I when I think about what we did you know there there's um
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there's an irrationality to selling your house and giving away half of it there's
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all there's possibly something that's more irrational about saying okay I'm
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going to let the hormonal teenagers have exactly the same same say as the adults
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but you know my wife really insisted on this and it was fascinating because it was the it's probably the most important
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thing that we did um what what she said was you know look who's selling their
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house all four of us you know granted we we bought the house but the kids are giving up their rooms they're giving up
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their backyard they're moving just as we are and so you know to not make this a
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family project in which each family member has a say um you know would be would be Miss that point and so what we
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did was rather than two parents two kids we completely flattened the hierarchy one person one vote and it was it was
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possibly the most empowering thing that ever happened for these kids well I certainly read your book as one of uh a
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family kind of discovering its values and how how you wanted to live together uh now and in the future uh and and how
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you built trust and relationships uh that that you didn't have before in the
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same way in the same depth what was that like for you Hannah uh as as one of the
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two children involved in this in terms of uh having a greater say and greater sense of responsibility was it difficult
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was it fun was it I I mean first of all it was unbelievably empowering to have you know as much say as your parents in
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in a decision this big um and you know we were doing the research together and it was it was cool because you know not
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not saying that our that our um opinions didn't matter before but um they definitely became more important and um
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our parents really did start listening to us and when we would have family conversations what you said was
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important and what you said really did matter so um I mean first of all it was just extremely empowering but you know
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as this process went went along I realized that I trust my parents more I trusted my brother more um we we really
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started um not only were we living in a smaller space but we were really um we were really connecting over this project
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and and I I did start to realize you know Joe isn't really you know your brother my brother sorry um isn't really
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into poverty poverty related issues he doesn't really like going to you know
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the soup kitchen or the food bank like I like but he actually you know likes going to the Humane Society or likes he
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does sometimes like going to the food bank so you know it's kind of cool to see you know what he does like what he
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doesn't like and kind of um me figuring out his passions as he's figuring them
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out and kind of um sharing that experience together well I'm sure that there might be some parents out there
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who are thinking hm equal uh votes to children in a family uh that doesn't quite square with our values and how we
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operate and I'm sure you must have met with some ambivalence in in your yourselves about about moving to that
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model I I was nervous about it when Joan first brought it up I I actually didn't
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love the idea um in part because I worried about how we would wall it off not so much in this project but okay how
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do I let my kids have a say over where we invest $800,000 which is what we ended up
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doing and then at the same time be able to turn around and say no you can't use
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the car or no you no you have to do your homework before you go out with your friends and I wondered where the
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boundary would be so did it become harder to draw those limits actually the amazing thing is that as we empowered
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the kids to make important decisions they stepped up in other areas of their lives and so and so you know Hannah
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talked about the empowerment piece what's fascinating to me is that you know these days first of all the lines
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of communication have become you know we went we essentially went from dialup to
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broadband on the lines of communication and and if you think about um the fact that now I know you know if Hannah's
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going to do something or does do something we talk about it and I can trust her more to make better decisions
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about those things like when she's going to drive the car so I don't even have to
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tell her most of the time but when I do she does respect that because she understands where I'm coming from
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because she knows me better or she knows Joan better you know my wife is this is
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this accurate would you say oh definitely I mean I I have no problem um you know talking to my parents openly
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you know um telling them things that probably most teenagers wouldn't tell their parents or sometimes we don't want
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to hear right um but I think that in general um our family is just more open now and and really have something in
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common and so you you go through this process of making a decision ultimately to to work with the hunger project and
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then travel to Ghana I I know that you've been there at least once um tell us about what it was like to uh
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to be there among the people that you were working with and uh what you encountered there and what you learned
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well when you when you go over to Ghana you know with the hunger project um the hunger project does no Hands-On work
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they are they really believe in the Africans they really believe that um that these communities are are kind of
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you know the people in these communities are really the change agent of their own
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future and and can really um impact their own future so um when we went there we really did no Hands-On work I
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was expecting to you know build a well or kind of you know what I used to think a mission trip was you know and maybe
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build uh paint a church or build a school I I really didn't know um and it was shocking to me that when I was there
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I was really there to just talk to the people and to connect with them and to say I believe in you and this work that
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you're doing is really going to change your life and in fact I've come 5,000
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miles to see the work that you're doing and to see and to see the work that you're doing to um change your community
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um and that's really empowering for them knowing that we stand behind them and
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that we um are there for them no matter what um but also I you know we we went to um the opening of a primary school um
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went to the opening of a cmal and this is just my favorite part of the whole trip was you know seeing how excited
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these people were over this cornmeal you know something I'd never even thought
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about you know and I had never even seen a cornmeal so being there was so cool and these people were so excited and the
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reason that there were so excited was because um it meant that their kids mainly girls didn't have to walk six
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miles roundt trip to get their corn milled anymore but could instead go to school and get an education and when I
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was leaving um my dad told me that that this cornmeal cost the same amount as Joe's braces and it was just astounding
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to me um that I was now seeing that community and an ed I mean education in a community cost the same amount as
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teeth Beauty something that we pay for in this country um and at that moment I really did know that that I was doing
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the right thing with my money and and really um making a difference in those communities one of the important themes
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of the the episode in the book that's about your your time and Ghana is how you learned that you couldn't really do
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things for people there or even to get involved directly in any sort of the the the dayto day was was really to be
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intrusive and instead that your primary role is as you said it to be supportive and to demonstrate your belief in them
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and to show that you investing in them and and really to stand back then to to to allow them to uh to flourish uh you
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know in in the light of your uh your support yeah you know what's so funny is
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you know we're we're here on the Wharton Network so I can talk about this in in
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this context but but when I think about this it's if if as a boss yeah every
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time one of your employees didn't do something the way you would do it if you
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would go back in and do it that exact way what would your employee learn learn when would that employee learn and how
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you know not very much and not very quickly and certainly be disincentive right to do great work on their own you
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know why do we go overseas and then assume that the that the parameters are different that we should go over there
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and we should do the work for these poor people in the developing worlds because
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we have more money therefore we're smarter nonsense you know but yet we take this Paradigm and we completely
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shift it because we've gone to someplace with less resources than we have well
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the courses that I teach you are about leadership and in particular leadership from the point of view of the whole
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person and your your case so well illustrates the core ideas of the work that we're doing here in in in this
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course workor and and what you just described is very much uh an important aspect of what it means to lead in the
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modern world to to empower others to get things done and to the people on the ground who have the answers and who have
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the motivation or need the support you're you're providing that and stepping back back but it really was a
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struggle both as a parent as well as uh as as as a charitable philanthropist you
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know actually if you think about it we did the same thing at home that we're
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now we've been asked to do over in Africa you know which is Empower people to build their own Futures and what's
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fascinating is that that you know that that old saying if you give a man a fish he'll eat for day you teach a man to
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fish leave for a lifetime well the hunger Project's perspective is the man already knows how to fish MH the man
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doesn't the man doesn't have the resources to be able to to fish the man
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could probably teach you how to fish and by the way if you really want success the man almost always has to be a woman
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and the hunger projects focuses very much on women's empowerment wow why is that because because if you give a man
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$10 or a man earns $10 the first thing you'll do is smoke some cigarettes drink
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a few coca-colas maybe go out for a beer with his friends and then come back with
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a few bucks what the woman will do is make sure the school fees are paid for first primarily for her daughter as well
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cuz the son's already usually taken care of and then make sure the household is
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taken care of and then if there's something left over you know then then we'll have a
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conversation now this is uh a truly remarkable example of U of giving and and of sacrifice but I I know that you
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have said extremely eloquently in the book and other conversations we've had
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about how uh the return to you personally Kevin and to your family was much greater than the cost could you say
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a little bit more about that I it's to me it it's amazing how we set out to do
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a little bit of good in the world and what what it's done for our family for
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our little Community has just completely been transformative you know we have at
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a time when our teenagers are supposed to be going in every direction our family has never been closer that you
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know there's a trust level Among Us there's a connectedness Among Us there's
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a currency that that we have that um we never had before and um and and I you know I think we it's almost like we we
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we Rec we realized that you know we gave a little bit but what we've gotten out
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of this has far surpassed that yeah and when I think about you know what I miss about the old house people always ask me
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you know do you miss do you miss having the cool house of course I the elevator to your bedroom exactly I mean it was so
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cool when people would come over and say come on let's go ride the elevator it's
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my birthday please please um but when I think about it um you know giving up the
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house is helping 40,000 villagers in Ghana and and has helped our family grow closer and have trust in one another and
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I would make that trade any day but it's really important and and Hannah you
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should talk to this I think that we don't expect anybody else to sell their house right you know I mean do you want
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to talk about that a little yeah sure I mean obviously we don't expect anyone to
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sell their house especially in this tough economy um and and we understand that we understand that you know people
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don't have the resour to do that all the time but um but we do think that everyone has more than enough of
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something in their lives um that they can afford to give away half of and that can be time you know maybe if you watch
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six hours of TV a week maybe you cut that down to three and then you spend those three hours um you know at at a at
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a children's shelter or um maybe you um decide to take half of your vacation
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that you would normally take and and use that time or that money to maybe donate
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to the Ronald McDonald House or visit kids in a cancer kids in a Cancer Clinic it's really all about finding you know
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that one thing in your life whether it's time Talent OR treasure um that you can
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afford to give away half of and the and the real key to it is yes if you can get
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together with your family or your dorm or your community or your sorority your fraternity and do it collectively then
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you get that power that really comes from the interconnectedness of your of your intentional actions and that's
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where the that's where you know that's where the the personal gain comes in and
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you didn't know that that was coming that that was sort of an unintended byproduct of this amazing uh impulse
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that you had to to try to heal the broken world as as some would say it's it healed our world I'll tell you that
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much but you're right I mean it's you know it's one of those things that if
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you had said okay you know predict the future where you by the end of this project what's what's going to what's
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the world going to be like for you um I wouldn't have told you that our family
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would be that much closer you know I would have said well maybe we can you know we can help some people and in in
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the developing World build themselves a better future and what we ended up doing
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was yes doing that but also building ourselves a better future which is really great you you must encounter a
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great deal of uh skepticism about people saying well you could afford to do that
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and what you've downsized to is a lot more than what most people have anyway
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so um how do you respond to those kinds of criticisms and and also the notion of
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uh overseas support as opposed to helping the the many many people here in America who uh who could also benefit
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from philanthropic giving well first of all this doesn't have to be about money
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at all um and that's kind of one of the main things is that you don't have to
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have a lot of money to do a half project it's all about finding anything in your
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life that you can afford to give away half of whether that's the clothes in your closet or the amount of time you do
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blank or you know how much money you have it doesn't matter and it's all
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about um finding that thing it doesn't have to be money um but also you know um
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the reason that we decided to work overseas is really um for for three main reasons and the first reason is um we
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were already doing a lot of um community of a lot of work locally you know I work
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at um Cafe 458 which is an Atlanta restaurant for homeless men um my dad is on the board of habitat my brother loves
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the Humane Society my mom and I work at the food bank and we we felt like we were involved in our local community and
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also we wanted to work globally but at the same time we did increase the amount of work that we were doing locally um
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the second reason is we wanted to um to work in a place where where our money would would really be um effective we
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wanted to watch um the project kind of progress um see how the villagers were benefiting from it and really kind of be
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able to see what's what um the improvements that that have been made um and then also the third reason is there
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really is no Safety Net in places like Gana Africa they don't have the luxury
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of having a soup kitchen down the street or or a food pantry you know two blocks
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away they don't even have health care for tens of miles so um we really wanted
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to work in a place where we're going to make the most impact mhm and and to get to your question
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about um about others reactions yeah you know we are we are very aware that um that PE that people in this country are
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hurting and we're not insensitive to that and as Hannah said we did we've
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increased both the number of dollars and the number of hours that we've spent in
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our local community um you know during this whole process and and and you know one of the cool things about doing a
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half project is you know when we teach this when we go into inner city schools and we talk about this is that because
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it doesn't take any resources you know other than you know other than the ones
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you have available including time you know and is so great for your personal Community right that we think it's
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actually very helpful for people who are under Financial stress to actually Focus
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outside themselves and to recognize that there is a bonding experience that they
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can have you know look if a family can bring themselves closer together by giving a little bit of what they have
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you know out into the world you know look there's a reason why um there's a
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reason why the lower income brackets are the most charitable when you look at statistic percentage Bas it's it's
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because they recognize what it's like to be that close you know so so how has
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this changed your your future outlook uh I'd like to hear from both of you on
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this Kevin you were a a Wall Street Journal editor and a successful writer an entrepreneur um this this this project
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now is probably taking up a good deal of your time and energy and opening up all
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kinds of new opportunities for you how has how how's your professional identity
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changed as a result of this transformative experience well I I think what's happened in my personal life in
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my professional life really is is that is that I've gone from being you know
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just a writer and an entrepreneur to actually being an evangelist because we've stumbled across something that
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really has become um you know very powerful for for our family and for the world and so we want to tell that story
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we want people to hear it because we think it can do great things with their own communities and so um that's really
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where I where I have transitioned um how about you Hannah well I'm a junior in high school right
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now so um and I want to be a nurse um and I was definitely inspired by the nurses in Ghana and just seeing um how
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much of an impact that they have on their communities um but I think that you know as for the future I think I'll
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always find half projects to do half is such a measurable number you know so often in our lives we say I wish I could
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do more you know but more there's really nothing to the word more um but you know
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with with half it's so measurable and you can track it and um so I think that
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I'll be doing half projects you know for my whole life could you give us an update on what's happening in Ghana with
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uh the results of your I would say early results of your Investments there yeah the the way the hunger project works is
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they run a five-year program that helps villagers move from poverty to self-reliance and we're in year two with
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one of the sets of villages and we're in year one with the uh with the other sets
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of set of villages and so they will be they will be going for the next 3 to 5 years um three to four years I guess and
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um and they are they are on the path to self-reliance which is a really considerable thing for these communities
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that have traditionally been hand out communities um and we'll go back over there very soon and spend more time in
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The Villages and meeting with the people and supporting them and dancing very badly and you know doing all the things
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that we do when we're on and and how's Joseph doing and why don't you to give
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us the update on how your younger brother family skeptic Joseph is great um he's kind of he's definitely on board
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with the project now he loves the project um loves um going to Ghana and so um when we go this summer he's just
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really excited about that um but he was very skeptical at first right he kept thinking if I if I read it correctly
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well how's this going to affect me right how is this going to benefit me but um
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yeah and he he wasn't on board at all um kind of wanted it to really benefit him
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um and didn't really care what we did as long as it you know really helped him um
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but um you know through the project uh he's got been more empowered and he um
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he loves the project now he I think that one of the greatest Parts um for him was
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we when we we went to Ghana they have the men kind of have this handshake that they do and and the second that we got
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there um Joe learned the handshake and then kind of connected with all of the the other guys in Ghana so um that was a
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really cool thing for him and he I think really enjoyed the trip um just by starting off like that and um you know
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he's um he he doing really well I what do you want to say about him no I mean
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Joseph is Joseph actually is a fascinating character in this play because he's um he we like to joke that
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he is our he's our own peer review committee you know if we can't get it
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through Joseph we haven't thought it through well enough and it's actually a
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very important role you know that organizationally you know we have to we have to make sure that we have thought
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through our you know what we're doing on this project well enough to get it past
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josephh and um and if we don't he'll call us on it and he'll call us hard on
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it and um and sometimes to the point where you want to strangle him a little bit but most of the time he's right and
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um and so he's helped us I think in a lot of ways really focus our thinking yeah it it doesn't seem like you would
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have gotten to where you would have had he not been the voice of descent that was empowered to speak
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about you know what the the problems were with your design and forcing you to adjust continually along the way yeah he
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definitely slowed down the process a lot um I don't think we would have um it I
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don't think it would have taken us a year to decide on an organization if it
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wasn't for Joe and he um you know he always asks why are we doing this again
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how is this helping um you know what if this fails what are we going to do um and so he he really did have an
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important role and he um he constantly was saying okay this doesn't make sense
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guys just slow down because this doesn't make sense so um when when everybody
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else was kind of on a roll and we're like okay this is what we're doing and
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this is the charity that we're working with this is how much money we're giving
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away he was saying whoa whoa whoa I don't get it I don't get it so we it it
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did Force us to slow down and kind of rethink what we were doing and and make sure that it did get past Joe well this
00:26:08
is a story that has so many inspiring ideas and uh illustrations of great leadership and uh I'm thrilled that you
00:26:16
took the time to visit us today and to to share your story if people want to learn more about the work that you are
00:26:22
doing now and and in the future and how they can adopt some of these ideas and principles what they do go to the
00:26:29
powerof half.com and they can find they can keep they can get updated on our work and you know see where we're going
00:26:36
and also they we're we're about to launch a uh a program of 52 weeks of halves so that they can create their
00:26:43
people can create their own half Project based on uh some ideas that we throw out
00:26:47
there excellent well we'll look forward to that and to to more from from your
00:26:53
your family and uh and all the people that you're touching thank you so much
00:26:56
for being here today Kevin Hannah it's been a real pleasure thank you