Hi there :)
This is Felix. Within a relatively short period of time, I was able to accumulate a lot of wealth. When people ask me how I made my money, I tell them that I made my money through tithing. Tithing is basically donating 10% of all of your income. I’ve been in quite a few different businesses over the years, forex being one of them. Whatever businesses I was in are irrelevant. Whenever I donated 10% or more, things went smoothly and I was making a lot of money, whenever I stopped donating the 10%, things went very difficult, and I was making less money, period, end of story. I have taught this principle many people, and it works without failure. This is the only true secret to success that works without failure. I have read biographies of MANY wealthy people, and this principle is present in more than 90% of them. They all say that they have no idea how it works, all they know is that it works. You better put it to test. It’s cheap to try and tax deductible. But talk is cheap, try it for 6 months, and see for yourself…
A couple of months ago, I met a CEO of a charity that at first didn’t inspire me at all, but after talking to him, I was absolutely inspired to add this charity on my list of support.
Now that I am wealthier than I was before, instead of just donating 10%, I actually hook up with charities, commit to them large sums of money, and ask them to provide me a business plan of how things will be implemented. That way I am sure that my money goes exactly where I want it to go, and I can see the difference made with my own eyes.
The charity that I added to my list of support is called FTPF.org , also known as Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. At first I thought that planting fruit trees is quite silly. It’s a noble act, but I thought that it really wouldn’t make that much difference in the world. After talking to the CEO of this organization about different projects they have done and the impact those projects had, I decided to give them $11,000. I asked the guy for a business plan of how this money would be spent, and he brought it to me the next day. At that point, I reviewed the business plan, found it sound, and wrote him the check. Then after thinking about it for quite some time, and really understanding the impact of what they do, I got even more inspired, and I decided to commit to this charity another $200,000, and I asked them for a detailed business plan of what they would do with that money. Of course, I wouldn’t release all of this money to them at once, the project had to be broken down into bite size pieces of $5,000 to $20,000 per piece, so that when they accomplish first piece of the project successfully, I would give them second piece of the funds, et cetera.
Now, let me explain to you what really inspired me about this charity. These guys do four distinct things. They get requests from different places in the world that would like to have an orchard of fruit trees, but can’t afford to get it. The four main places that usually request fruit orchards are schools, animal sanctuaries, Native American tribes, and homeless shelters. Now let’s discuss each category separately, and let me tell you what really inspired me about it.
First of all, the act of planting fruit trees is simply genius in itself. When a tree is planted, it absorbs carbon dioxide, which is basically toxic air that humans, animals and many factories throw out. In exchange it produces Oxygen, which is basically good air, essential for human and animal survival. Then the tree eventually produces fruits. The fruits are either eaten by humans, or animals, or if they are not eaten, they fall down to rejuvenate the soil. The fruit trees are probably the most essential trees of all trees. Everybody is talking about rainforest, well…what is in the rainforest mainly? A lot of different things actually, but there are a lot more fruit trees in the rainforest than any other type of forest. That’s why it creates such a magical self sustaining environment. But what I just said is only the surface of this project. It actually goes a lot deeper than this.
Schools
When FTPF gets a request for a fruit orchard from a school, the planting process itself has proved to be transformational. In addition to bringing their own staff and volunteers, as much as possible, they get the kids from that school involved too. They educate the kids and the staff on how to actually plant the trees, and in addition to that, they educate them on how to maintain it in order to get the most fruits on it. Imagine a kid who planted his own tree…
First of all, there is a BIG sense of accomplishment that’s felt emotionally, and second of all, most kids come around every few days, and watch their own tree grow. It gives them a whole new sense of purpose, and new sense of emotional satisfaction. Imagine what happens when the tree starts producing fruits, and the kid gets to eat those fruits, and gets to share those fruits with other kids. Or if the kid leaves the school, they may still come around to just take care of their tree. Though this may not sound too impressive to some, I think it’s extremely powerful.
Animal Sanctuaries
There are quite a few animal sanctuaries in the US and other parts of the world. What they do is move animals to these places when they remove forests, or when they rescue animals from natural disasters, and other places where the animal would die under those circumstances. The problem is that many animal sanctuaries do not have ideal conditions for these animals. There is not enough food, not enough shade, and other things.
When FTPF plants fruit trees at animal sanctuaries that request the trees, they first make sure that the sanctuary is suitable for a planting of orchard, so that the trees don’t just get destroyed by animals right after planting. The fruit trees obviously provide food, shades, and homes for many animals. You know, I live in Southern California, and I really like to hike sometimes. It’s just really sad to see some bears that are trying to get proper fat and nutrition from human garbage, and that’s usually not enough, so many of them get out of hibernation period too early, because they didn’t store enough proper food, and it totally messes their mating and other parts of their lifestyle. If there were more fruit trees planted in such places, that could really eventually solve some of these problems
Native American Tribes
It’s truly amazing to see how many Native American tribes are requesting fruit orchards from FTPF. And when they go out there to plant stuff, some powerful transformations take place among many people in the tribes. You see, from what I know and understand, a lot of Native Americans are brought up completely different than most of the other residents in the countries of Southern and North America. They are brought up without much education, and there is a lot of negative conditioning going on, about how the Europeans came and took their land. When FTPF comes in to plant trees there, they get to see a bit different environment than they are used to, and some very powerful emotional healings take place. Let alone the fact that a lot of these indigenous people live in extreme poverty, because they can’t function in the normal society, and they have to either depend on farming for food or on buying the cheapest and extremely fast food that completely throws off their metabolism and health, because their genes are even less used to such food than the European genes.
Homeless Shelters
Some years ago I was extremely curious to understand why people become homeless. I have personally bought and fed hundreds of them, and I have personally spoken to quite a few of them about how and why they became homeless. There were all kinds of stories, but most of the stories came to one thing. Those were mentally weaker people usually coming from highly unintelligent and abusive families, and they underwent some kind of an emotional shock that they simply didn’t have enough mental power to recover from, and as they started living on the streets, they realized that it was possible, so they became complacent with their lower standard of living. Most of them had extremely low confidence, they felt like they weren’t good enough to do anything, and that they were useless to the society. Most of them had the mind of very young children, except they lost that spark and hope that most kids have. No wonder they couldn’t function in the society. When FTPF gets a request to go and plant trees in a homeless shelter, in addition to the obvious benefit of providing food to the homeless from the trees, there is actually some transformation that takes place among some of the homeless people. First of all, they learn a skill of planting the trees, but in addition to that when they are asked to help in the planting process, they feel useful, and seeing the tree blossom and grow, which was planted due to their efforts seems to partially heal some of their emotional wounds, and even gives them some kind of sense of family. I am sure that there are few that even get off the street, due to this process, though such results are extremely difficult to track.
Well…that’s the end of my story :) I shared with you why it inspires me to support this particular charity. If it inspires you, I invite you to become involved, and donate some money to it as well. All donations that are collected between now and November 18th, 2007, will go into that $200,000 budget, that I will personally control and make sure that it’s used extremely efficiently.
You see, I really believe in tithing (giving 10% or more of your income), but when I talk to people about this, almost everybody is inspired by giving, but very few donate, because they feel that most charities are inefficiently run organizations, and a lot of money gets wasted before it gets to the actual cause. I must tell you, in my experience, this is a very valid concern, especially when it comes to large organizations such as Red Cross. There are also a lot of charities that are started in Eastern Europe and Africa that are complete scams, designed to create beautiful websites, and simply collect money, without doing anything. There are also charities that are started in the developed countries, like the US, UK, and others, where the charity is simply a business model that’s easier to make money with than a regular company. Imagine a dentist that wants to make a bunch of money. He starts the charity to help poor families all over the world, and he does dental work on them. He gets some very cheap or even donated equipment, and resells it to his own charity, and makes a profit, he pays himself tens of thousands of dollars in salary per month, and it’s definitely easier to simply get the money for free and then use it, instead of trying to compete among other dentists for business. On the bright side of it, he indeed does free dental work for underprivileged people, but because the charity is run like a business, and his intention is to become extremely wealthy from this charity, like any other dental practice, people are not really inspired to support such charity, simply because it just doesn’t feel right, so the dentist is forced to obfuscate things and make books very complicated. He is doing everything legal, but just not fully ethical according to most people’s standards. What happens even more often is people with great hearts and great intentions start a charity, but they are just very poor businessmen without any experience. They don’t know how to budget properly, and how to operate on string budget. Under normal business conditions, they would go bankrupt very fast, but because the free money comes into the charity, they still operate, but extremely inefficiently.
Yes, these things are extremely valid, and if these things were your concerns for donating, they are extremely valid concerns that I also had. It is very difficult to find good, efficient charities, and even then, I feel that if I guide my own projects within them, I get a lot bigger bang for my buck.
So if this particular cause inspires you, I can assure you that your money would really make a difference, and it should be obvious that I don’t have any financial interest in any of my charitable work. You can support this charity through this link http://www.ftpf.org/donation.htm, and all donations until November 18th, 2007, will go towards the $200K project and will be under my control and supervision. If there are enough people that show interest through their donations, no matter the amount, I will be more than happy to start other projects with this and other valid organizations that you would be able to donate to.
Through my forex websites and services, my goal is to help you make money in forex, but it’s extremely difficult, unless you start tithing… You need to tithe, and it has to be done outside of your family and friends circle. Please find charities that inspire you, and watch your 10% donations grow over time, and you will know that as they are growing, that means that your income is increasing and your life is improving…
P.S. Please see below approximate budget to plant an orchard with 40 mature trees in the US. The budget gets reduced by more than 5 times when planting is done abroad in developing countries. I believe that this budget would be reduced as stuff is bought in bulk, and projects are combined by proximity. Also, below the budget, please find the specific list of names that have requested fruit orchards in their location, and will probably be the first to receive them in the first couple of stages of funds disbursement.
Specific list of names that we are planning to accommodate in the first couple of stages of the budget:
Animal Protection Institute’s Primate Sanctuary (Dilley, TX)
Linda Blair World Heart Foundation (Toluca Lake, CA)Farm Sanctuary West (Orland, CA)
Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary (Woodstock, NY)
Farm Sanctuary East (Watkins Glen, NY)
Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary (Poolesville, MD)
Hopi Reservation, Arizona: Creating community orchards through the Orchard Restoration Project, Natwani Coalition
Western Navajo Nation: 4 projects total, run through the “Native Foodways for Health” program, including a senior center, 2 pubic schools, and a community farm
Red Cliff Band of Chippewa Indians (Bayfield, WI): Community Farm Project
Gila River Indian Reservation (Arizona): Ira Hayes High School orchard
Manzanita Band of the Kumeyaay Nation (East San Diego County, CA): Community orchard project
St. Francis Parish Homeless Shelter (Bakersfield, CA): We have a weekly news show that is interested in documenting our project at this homeless shelter to feature on their program
Puerto Rico Center for Social Concerns (Caguas, Puerto Rico): Drug rehab program run by “Las Hermanas de Buen Pastor”
Environmental Charter High School & Colfax Elementary School (Los Angeles, CA)
South Bronx High School (NY)
The Stadium School (Baltimore, MD)
Title One High School (Greeneville, SC)
To Our Success!
-Felix Homogratus
P.S. Again, if you are interested in supporting this
project, here is the link:
http://www.ftpf.org/donation.htm