An orphan in Liberia.
A founder in Seattle.
A calling in between.

My name is Randall R. Kollie, and I want to tell you the truth about why I do what I do.

I was born in Liberia. And when I was eleven years old, my parents died.

I don't say that for pity. I say it because I need you to understand where this story begins. At eleven years old, I was a boy with no father to teach him, no mother to feed him, and no plan for how tomorrow was going to work. In a country like Liberia, that is not a story with a good ending. Most children in my situation disappear — into the streets, into hunger, into a life that never gets to become anything.

But I did not disappear. And the only reason I did not disappear is because people I did not know, people who owed me nothing, chose to see me. They fed me when they didn't have to. They put me in a classroom when it would have been easier to look away. They spoke life over a boy who had every reason to believe his story was already over.

Those people were the hands of God. And they carried me long enough for me to grow into the man writing this today.

I came to America. I built a life. I became a certified electrician. I married my wife — we just celebrated ten years together — and by every measurable standard, I made it.

But something in me could never rest. Because every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a boy who should not have made it. Every time I passed a child on the street, I saw myself at eleven years old. And every time I thought about Liberia, I heard the voices of children who were exactly where I had been — but with no one yet coming for them.

That is why Empower Young Minds exists.

Empower Young Minds is a Christian nonprofit built to do for these children what was once done for me. We equip underprivileged youth in Liberia with two things they cannot survive without: an education that opens doors, and a faith that steadies the ground beneath their feet.

We put children in classrooms who would not otherwise be in classrooms. We put Bibles in their hands. We put shoes on their feet, uniforms on their backs, and hope in a place that has been taught to expect very little of it.

This year, we are working to sponsor two hundred children — two hundred boys and girls just like the boy I once was — with tuition, uniforms, shoes, books, supplies, a backpack, and a Bible. Two hundred dollars puts one child in school for a year. Two hundred dollars is the difference between a life that disappears and a life that gets to become something.

I am not asking you to give because I need your money. I am asking you to give because somewhere in Liberia right now there is an eleven-year-old boy standing exactly where I once stood — and he is waiting to see whether anyone will be the hands of God for him the way strangers were for me.

I know what it is to be that boy. I am now living what happens when someone chooses to answer.

Will you help us answer for two hundred more?