2024-06-17_Fundraising_Request_for_Venezuela
00:00:00.000 | - Greetings radicals.
00:00:01.360 | On today's show, I'd like to tell you about
00:00:03.240 | a very worthy charitable relief effort
00:00:06.280 | that I myself have had the privilege of being involved in
00:00:10.000 | for almost five years now,
00:00:12.040 | and ask you to consider making a financial donation
00:00:15.320 | to this work.
00:00:16.980 | I'll describe all the details as we get into the audio here,
00:00:19.560 | but put simply, I've been involved for, again,
00:00:22.360 | almost five years with a variety of relief efforts
00:00:25.520 | in the South American nation of Venezuela.
00:00:29.080 | And that has taken a number of different shapes
00:00:31.520 | over the years, again,
00:00:32.520 | as I'll tell you about in a few minutes.
00:00:34.700 | Currently, the most productive and effective effort
00:00:37.920 | that I've been involved in
00:00:39.960 | has been to provide food relief and agricultural relief
00:00:44.760 | by helping with gardening supplies
00:00:48.560 | to plant large gardens
00:00:50.680 | in various Venezuelan penitentiaries,
00:00:54.080 | where there are many men, primarily men,
00:00:56.720 | men and women imprisoned
00:00:57.680 | in these Venezuelan penitentiaries.
00:00:59.720 | And the opportunity and the need
00:01:02.600 | has now exceeded what I myself can give
00:01:05.280 | out of my own personal financial resources.
00:01:08.100 | So I'm bringing the request to you
00:01:09.680 | and asking you to contribute.
00:01:11.780 | Links are in the description
00:01:13.520 | where you can go directly and make a credit card donation
00:01:15.680 | or use PayPal, whichever is easier for you.
00:01:18.040 | That money will get directly to me.
00:01:19.480 | And as I'll describe in the audio coming up here,
00:01:22.540 | I'll describe what I'm gonna do with the money
00:01:24.160 | and all those details.
00:01:26.240 | But if at any point in time you're ready to give,
00:01:28.320 | please just go to that link and make a donation.
00:01:30.960 | Let me begin with a little bit of backstory
00:01:34.000 | and I'll continue on from there
00:01:37.160 | to share with you a little bit about the current work.
00:01:40.200 | Longtime listeners to Radical Personal Finance
00:01:43.040 | know that I've had the opportunity to be involved
00:01:45.480 | in a variety of different ways
00:01:47.320 | with some very important and effective relief efforts
00:01:52.120 | serving Venezuelan refugees.
00:01:54.060 | I've had a great interest in Venezuela.
00:01:56.100 | Ever since 2005, when I was in college in 2005,
00:02:01.100 | in a study abroad program in Costa Rica,
00:02:05.120 | I had a professor who extolled the virtues of Venezuela
00:02:09.400 | at that time as basically being the ideal expression
00:02:14.400 | of what a modern economy should be.
00:02:18.820 | This professor was an extremely left-wing professor
00:02:22.320 | and I was being confronted with the philosophical claims
00:02:27.320 | in favor of leftism.
00:02:29.620 | And at that time, Cuba and Venezuela
00:02:32.700 | were being held before me
00:02:34.160 | as the paragons of modern development,
00:02:37.100 | how all nation states should function.
00:02:39.540 | And of the two, although all of the woes of Cuba
00:02:43.500 | were being blamed on the US blockade of Cuba,
00:02:48.500 | many of the benefits of Cuba
00:02:49.700 | were being extolled again and again,
00:02:51.380 | and Venezuela was being held out as the ideal example
00:02:54.560 | of how a country can flourish
00:02:56.680 | under a leftist system of government
00:03:00.040 | if not being blockaded by another nation.
00:03:02.840 | Venezuela at that time was the wealthiest country
00:03:05.880 | in South America, very high standard of living,
00:03:08.440 | all kinds of stuff,
00:03:09.280 | stuff that I could hardly believe at the time.
00:03:12.560 | Well, fast forward after I returned to the United States,
00:03:14.900 | I started to hear a few years later
00:03:16.880 | about a massive economic crisis
00:03:19.480 | and being one who paid a lot of attention
00:03:21.320 | to economic crises.
00:03:22.440 | When I heard one year
00:03:23.380 | that there was a million percent hyperinflation
00:03:26.100 | in Venezuela, I could hardly believe it.
00:03:28.360 | And I started to follow it more closely,
00:03:31.860 | and Venezuela went through a terrible economic crisis
00:03:36.860 | with just terrible hyperinflation.
00:03:39.940 | And going back about five years now,
00:03:42.140 | I started to be involved with some people
00:03:44.540 | who were taking part in various refugee relief efforts.
00:03:49.460 | All across Venezuela, people were starving,
00:03:52.400 | and there were thousands and thousands and thousands
00:03:55.940 | of refugees leaving Venezuela,
00:03:58.180 | people just literally leaving
00:03:59.860 | with their children on their backs
00:04:01.140 | and walking out of the country
00:04:02.300 | to try to go and find any life anywhere else
00:04:05.380 | that they could put together where they could find food.
00:04:08.620 | And at the time, again, I talked about this
00:04:11.780 | in past episodes, but at the time,
00:04:13.980 | it started with where I first became aware of it
00:04:16.540 | was the refugee relief efforts.
00:04:18.780 | And the situation for Venezuelan refugees
00:04:23.080 | was absolutely horrendous.
00:04:25.900 | There was incredible poverty, incredible sickness,
00:04:28.580 | and there were huge, huge flows of refugees
00:04:32.020 | coming out of Venezuela at that time.
00:04:34.060 | Again, people fleeing absolute starvation.
00:04:36.820 | I was able to be connected with a relief effort
00:04:41.820 | that where, I have to be careful
00:04:45.120 | with some of the details here,
00:04:46.660 | a relief effort where a huge quantities of food
00:04:49.500 | were shipped in from abroad,
00:04:51.900 | and a lot of that food we were able to get into Venezuela.
00:04:55.380 | But most of the work was involved with refugee relief.
00:04:58.280 | And at the time here in Radical Personal Finance,
00:04:59.940 | we raised a significant sum of money
00:05:01.780 | to provide for refugee relief.
00:05:05.380 | And that sum of money was used to purchase food,
00:05:08.180 | was used to purchase a vehicle
00:05:10.820 | for some people who were involved at the border,
00:05:13.340 | and providing specific relief
00:05:14.920 | to many, many Venezuelan refugees
00:05:17.260 | that were at that time coming out of the country.
00:05:19.740 | Now, the refugee flows have gone back and forth
00:05:22.620 | over the years.
00:05:24.180 | Sometimes they've been higher,
00:05:25.420 | sometimes they've been lower,
00:05:27.180 | and there have been a variety of ongoing efforts
00:05:32.220 | and needs of refugees.
00:05:34.420 | What has happened though,
00:05:35.660 | is that almost anyone who was able to get out of Venezuela,
00:05:40.660 | got out of Venezuela.
00:05:43.420 | And as the countries around Venezuela,
00:05:46.120 | there in South America,
00:05:47.160 | basically reached their capacity for refugees,
00:05:49.660 | many of the refugees headed north.
00:05:51.660 | There was a huge flow about a year or so ago
00:05:55.120 | of refugees heading for the border of the United States.
00:05:58.440 | Many of them have gone to the United States,
00:06:00.280 | tried to get into the United States
00:06:01.500 | under the very lax immigration policies
00:06:05.680 | that the United States has had in place
00:06:07.160 | for the last couple of years.
00:06:08.720 | And it's been a nightmare
00:06:12.940 | for so many people in that situation.
00:06:15.420 | Point remains just that the refugee thing
00:06:17.540 | was a separate work
00:06:19.340 | that I've continued to be involved with over the last years,
00:06:22.340 | but the initial fundraising
00:06:23.940 | that I did here on Radical Personal Finance
00:06:25.580 | was sufficient for the need
00:06:26.820 | and sufficient for the opportunity.
00:06:29.380 | Now, what happened is through the contact
00:06:31.900 | that originally started with refugee relief,
00:06:34.100 | there were a variety of contacts made
00:06:36.700 | by some of the people that I'm involved with
00:06:38.880 | to start to work inside of Venezuelan prisons.
00:06:43.880 | Now, for my primarily North American audience,
00:06:49.320 | the way that prisons work in South America
00:06:55.440 | and in much of the world is very different
00:06:57.440 | than the way that prisons work in North America.
00:07:01.920 | First of all, it's difficult to ascertain
00:07:06.080 | the actual guilt or innocence of prisoners.
00:07:10.820 | Many prisoners are locked in prison
00:07:14.800 | because they're guilty of terrible crimes.
00:07:17.800 | However, many prisoners are locked in prison
00:07:20.560 | because they are political prisoners
00:07:22.400 | and they are supporters of the wrong political party
00:07:26.600 | or the wrong political position,
00:07:28.280 | and so they get locked up.
00:07:30.000 | I have heard many stories
00:07:31.840 | of people who have been locked up for years.
00:07:34.840 | There are no charges against them.
00:07:36.840 | There are no charges against them.
00:07:40.120 | There are no,
00:07:41.240 | there's no, their case is not being heard.
00:07:45.800 | They can't get a trial date,
00:07:47.440 | and they're just locked up in prison
00:07:48.760 | for a significant amount of time.
00:07:50.960 | Now, it's a mixture.
00:07:51.800 | Don't let me, hear me clearly.
00:07:53.500 | I'm not trying to say
00:07:54.340 | that everyone who's locked up in a prison is innocent.
00:07:55.960 | That's absolutely not true.
00:07:57.440 | What I am saying is, first of all,
00:08:00.240 | if you have any hesitations about supporting prisoners,
00:08:04.540 | which I don't believe you should,
00:08:06.360 | we should all support prisoners
00:08:08.080 | and provide relief for them.
00:08:11.080 | I'll save comments,
00:08:12.320 | further social commentary for another day,
00:08:14.400 | but a lot of times people are uncomfortable with,
00:08:17.120 | well, if someone's guilty of a crime,
00:08:18.520 | then he deserves to suffer.
00:08:19.960 | Well, it's a very mixed up situation.
00:08:23.280 | The other aspect of the prison system in South America
00:08:27.220 | that's very different
00:08:28.160 | than the prison system in North America
00:08:31.240 | is quite simply that prisoners are locked up,
00:08:34.740 | and yet they are entirely reliant
00:08:37.240 | on outside family and friends to support them.
00:08:41.740 | And so there's not, for example,
00:08:43.820 | the government doesn't provide food in the prisons,
00:08:46.560 | at least not substantial amounts of it.
00:08:49.060 | You can't go to prison and think,
00:08:50.340 | well, at least the government's gonna give me
00:08:51.660 | three square meals a day and a bed to sleep in.
00:08:53.900 | No, on the contrary,
00:08:54.900 | you're gonna get locked up in prison,
00:08:56.300 | and if your friends and family members don't bring you food
00:08:58.620 | and don't bring you money to buy food,
00:09:00.900 | then you're going to starve.
00:09:02.900 | And the levels of hunger and disease
00:09:07.780 | and all kinds of issues in many prisons
00:09:10.940 | throughout Latin America are absolutely staggering
00:09:13.620 | and heart-wrenching.
00:09:15.120 | It's really, really bad.
00:09:18.380 | And these people have basically no opportunity.
00:09:23.380 | Well, a number of years ago,
00:09:24.860 | there was a prison riot in Venezuela,
00:09:28.860 | and some people that I am in contact with
00:09:33.860 | had the opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement
00:09:38.980 | to the prison riot.
00:09:41.980 | The prisoners had taken over the prison,
00:09:43.620 | all of the authorities were outside.
00:09:45.460 | Last time this happened, there was a massacre,
00:09:49.140 | and lots of people died.
00:09:51.300 | This time around, we were able to negotiate
00:09:54.300 | a peaceful settlement to it and avoid a massacre
00:09:58.980 | by the police and the soldiers outside of the prison
00:10:01.780 | of the prisoners who had taken over the prison.
00:10:04.300 | And so this provided a foothold into some of the work
00:10:08.880 | that was available in Venezuelan prisons.
00:10:12.580 | Years ago, when President Hugo Chavez had come to power,
00:10:16.980 | he had expelled all Christian aid work
00:10:21.060 | and Christian missionaries out of the prison system
00:10:24.740 | because of his concerns about political work.
00:10:27.740 | And because of the work of successfully negotiating
00:10:35.440 | an end to the prison riot,
00:10:38.400 | there was a door that was opened up again
00:10:40.540 | for Christian missionaries and pastors
00:10:42.700 | to go back into the prisons and start to build churches
00:10:46.300 | and try to bring people together in Christian churches
00:10:50.580 | within the local prisons.
00:10:52.860 | And so this led to a lot of different things.
00:10:56.540 | But along the way, one of the things
00:10:58.380 | that we started to work at was to use the grounds
00:11:03.380 | around the prison to plant gardens, large gardens,
00:11:09.860 | with the goal of helping the prisoners to grow food
00:11:14.100 | so that they could provide for themselves
00:11:16.420 | and make a little bit of money and have a productive,
00:11:20.300 | some amount of productive work to keep themselves occupied.
00:11:23.900 | And so it's basically being run as a small business of sorts,
00:11:28.900 | like a micro business that each prisoner who desires
00:11:39.280 | is given a plot of land that is his to manage,
00:11:43.380 | is helped with the initial seeds and gardening supplies
00:11:46.580 | and instructions for how to grow things.
00:11:48.860 | And then he has complete and full supervision
00:11:52.660 | over that part of the land,
00:11:54.220 | and he's entitled to the produce that comes from that land.
00:11:58.100 | Now, on the whole, this effort
00:11:59.860 | has been enormously successful,
00:12:01.940 | much more successful than ever dreamed of.
00:12:05.060 | It's not been perfect.
00:12:06.500 | One of the frustrating things is that in many cases,
00:12:09.660 | the guys are so hungry
00:12:10.900 | that they don't even let their crops grow.
00:12:14.060 | You'll have a little lettuce out there
00:12:15.900 | and tiny little pieces of lettuce,
00:12:18.140 | it's all being eaten before it grows,
00:12:22.060 | the tomatoes are eaten green.
00:12:24.220 | But we've made progress and little by little,
00:12:26.220 | it's been very, very productive.
00:12:27.700 | But the good thing about it is this has taken
00:12:30.460 | basically vacant unused land and turned it productive.
00:12:33.700 | And more importantly, it has provided a great,
00:12:36.820 | again, a good source of calories
00:12:38.540 | and a great source of work and organization
00:12:40.620 | for many of the prisoners.
00:12:42.980 | And so over the last years,
00:12:44.260 | this work has grown and grown and grown.
00:12:46.500 | And we've developed a team of pastors
00:12:49.060 | who have been involved with facilitating that.
00:12:53.300 | And these two things have gone hand in hand,
00:12:55.260 | of again, planting small churches
00:12:58.100 | and not small in some cases,
00:13:00.140 | but basically trying to facilitate prison fellowships
00:13:03.420 | inside of the prisons, as well as facilitating gardens
00:13:07.780 | and expanding the gardening program.
00:13:11.380 | And the success of the program has given a lot of access
00:13:16.100 | and a lot of success.
00:13:17.140 | It has won many friends in high places
00:13:21.380 | and won quite a lot of respect of many people.
00:13:25.060 | And so that's been a really rewarding
00:13:27.580 | and productive use of time and energy
00:13:30.820 | to really try to solve some significant problems.
00:13:34.500 | From a financial perspective,
00:13:36.340 | I'm pretty proud of the results.
00:13:38.180 | I don't claim any credit for them at all.
00:13:40.060 | I'm just proud of the results
00:13:41.460 | because I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of charitable work.
00:13:44.620 | Much of it seems to be an enormous waste of money.
00:13:46.940 | You get a huge budgets and whatnot for very few results.
00:13:51.820 | So I'm skeptical of most charitable relief work.
00:13:54.460 | And thank God this work has been very productive
00:13:59.220 | and it's all been done on an absolute shoestring.
00:14:01.900 | The results from a financial perspective
00:14:05.540 | of what we could put into a fundraising video
00:14:09.780 | and whatnot for a big organization would be amazing.
00:14:13.660 | It's been really, really good.
00:14:15.260 | I'm very, very pleased with the work.
00:14:17.780 | And it's been a really good return on investment.
00:14:20.380 | It hasn't needed a lot of capital though.
00:14:22.780 | And so I haven't, this is why I haven't been years
00:14:25.700 | since I've talked about any of these issues here publicly.
00:14:27.940 | I haven't done any fundraising for this.
00:14:30.100 | I've been supporting it.
00:14:31.540 | There's been others that have supported it privately.
00:14:34.580 | And we've supported both the purchase of supplies
00:14:38.700 | for the physical relief work
00:14:40.580 | as well as the Christian ministers
00:14:42.820 | and their work as well.
00:14:45.020 | You get quite a lot of return on your money
00:14:48.540 | for the labor of very faithful, hardworking men
00:14:53.540 | who really care about the people
00:14:57.020 | that they're ministering to.
00:14:58.380 | It's been really, really great.
00:15:00.180 | However, the opportunities have just gotten bigger
00:15:02.260 | and bigger.
00:15:03.100 | And so now we are trying to be faithful
00:15:06.860 | and expand to a larger level.
00:15:09.860 | So the opportunities for expansion though
00:15:14.340 | mean that now what we can do with the money
00:15:18.900 | or what we can do with if we had more money is worth doing.
00:15:23.820 | And yet the opportunity has exceeded what I can do
00:15:26.620 | and what the other people who are directly involved can do.
00:15:29.620 | So I'm coming to you
00:15:30.580 | and I would like to invite you to be involved in it.
00:15:33.900 | Specifically, what I need is I need donations.
00:15:37.780 | And what I would do with those donations
00:15:39.540 | is I will use the donations
00:15:41.580 | to purchase agricultural supplies.
00:15:44.340 | So what we do is purchase all of the supplies
00:15:49.340 | in Bogota, Colombia, where they're widely available,
00:15:53.060 | seeds, gardening supplies, tools,
00:15:56.260 | all of the things that are not available in Venezuela.
00:15:59.460 | And then we bring them in to Venezuela
00:16:02.900 | and we distribute them, make small package starter,
00:16:05.260 | starter packages that we hand out to the prisoners
00:16:08.020 | and teach them and give them classes on what to do.
00:16:10.380 | And then they can go ahead
00:16:11.580 | and start running their own gardens
00:16:13.140 | and they get the crops.
00:16:16.100 | And again, they can make the money off of it,
00:16:17.980 | they can sell the produce, they can feed themselves,
00:16:20.180 | they can feed others, that's the plan.
00:16:23.140 | And so that's what I need your money for
00:16:26.500 | is your donations is to buy that.
00:16:28.620 | I continue to be involved on the Christian side of things.
00:16:31.820 | I'm not scared to come to you
00:16:32.940 | and ask for you to donate to Christian work,
00:16:37.500 | but that's not my specific,
00:16:39.100 | just doesn't seem like that's something
00:16:40.580 | that I want to do at this point in time.
00:16:42.980 | Specifically, I'm not asking you to support missionaries.
00:16:46.260 | This is a specific, a charitable relief effort,
00:16:50.220 | and I need money to purchase seeds
00:16:52.900 | and take it into Venezuela and deal with all of that.
00:16:55.540 | There are a few wrinkles to this as to why,
00:16:59.020 | first of all, you'll notice that I'm thinking carefully
00:17:02.660 | and choosing my words carefully.
00:17:04.860 | Due to all of the political instability,
00:17:07.740 | due to all of the details,
00:17:10.140 | due to all of the people who were involved,
00:17:12.460 | and due to the past history of relief
00:17:15.860 | and various laws that have been passed
00:17:17.540 | and laws that change and things like that,
00:17:20.260 | I'm trying to be very circumspect in my words
00:17:22.900 | so as not to unnecessarily involve someone
00:17:26.740 | who doesn't need to be unnecessarily involved.
00:17:29.580 | Because of the sensitive political situation,
00:17:32.740 | it's better that a lot of this be relatively private.
00:17:37.620 | And the support that we've been able to receive
00:17:41.620 | from a government perspective
00:17:43.540 | is not something that anyone wishes to jeopardize
00:17:47.860 | because that support is very necessary
00:17:51.580 | to the well-being of the men who are imprisoned.
00:17:54.140 | And so I wanna be thoughtful and respectful with my words
00:17:57.740 | and only share what's necessary to you.
00:18:00.940 | The problem is that that means that, basically,
00:18:03.420 | if you're gonna donate, you have to trust me.
00:18:05.580 | And I can't provide, and I'm not going to provide,
00:18:08.740 | any more due diligence or anything else than this.
00:18:13.740 | You say, "Joshua, why don't you go
00:18:16.140 | "and actually start a large charity
00:18:18.420 | "or an official organization and things like that?
00:18:21.980 | "Why don't you go and do it?"
00:18:22.980 | Quite literally, it would be illegal for me to do it.
00:18:26.780 | When you send me money, I'm gonna take that money.
00:18:29.460 | I'm gonna get stacks of cash out of an ATM.
00:18:32.660 | I'm gonna hand that money, the stacks of cash,
00:18:34.940 | to people who are going to go to the market in Bogota
00:18:39.020 | and buy large supplies,
00:18:41.420 | and then we're gonna ship them off to Venezuela.
00:18:43.180 | And so all of this work is all being done
00:18:45.580 | with basically no paper trail.
00:18:48.520 | Even if we wanted to provide a paper trail, we couldn't.
00:18:51.940 | The whole concept, one of the things,
00:18:54.460 | I haven't done much on the stuff in Venezuela,
00:18:57.220 | but it's fascinating, with a lot of day-to-day businesses,
00:19:00.860 | the whole concept of accounting and bookkeeping,
00:19:03.340 | with the old currency that just,
00:19:06.180 | people going around with stacks and stacks and stacks
00:19:09.140 | of taped-up bolivares, bolivars,
00:19:12.480 | is just completely,
00:19:15.460 | the whole concept of bookkeeping and accounting
00:19:20.300 | disappeared from many places.
00:19:22.020 | Not with big businesses, of course,
00:19:23.500 | who would keep their accounting in dollars
00:19:25.400 | and other stable currencies,
00:19:26.960 | but on a local level, it's like,
00:19:29.060 | the population has forgotten how to do bookkeeping
00:19:31.620 | and paper trails and receipts and all of that.
00:19:34.200 | So I can't, I actually can't,
00:19:36.420 | I can't do the necessary legal due diligences
00:19:39.820 | that would be involved of starting an organization.
00:19:43.420 | And then there's so many,
00:19:45.840 | basically, the whole thing is operating on trust.
00:19:49.800 | I know the people that are involved, I trust them,
00:19:52.900 | I've been involved in sending money
00:19:56.360 | and being involved continually over time,
00:19:58.740 | and I will continue to be involved.
00:20:01.100 | I, myself, will be in Venezuela,
00:20:03.180 | touring at a separate event within a few weeks,
00:20:06.100 | and so I'll be delivering the work myself
00:20:10.180 | and be there physically myself in the coming weeks.
00:20:15.180 | And so I'm not gonna use any of the money
00:20:17.100 | for anything except providing for them,
00:20:19.620 | but I can't provide any more,
00:20:23.680 | I can't provide any more paper trail
00:20:26.740 | or anything like that than you.
00:20:28.020 | So basically, I'm coming to you, I'm saying,
00:20:29.980 | if you trust me, if you respect me,
00:20:31.980 | then send me some money and I give you my word of honor
00:20:36.060 | that I will use it for the purposes that I'm describing.
00:20:39.600 | And I'm hoping that in the future
00:20:42.060 | that we could expand and do more.
00:20:44.940 | The opportunity right now,
00:20:46.180 | this big expansion is a really exciting opportunity.
00:20:49.740 | There's no way, there's no way that I could organize,
00:20:53.760 | so I really wanna do more work
00:20:56.560 | here at Radical Personal Finance to connect us together.
00:21:00.600 | There's zero possibility at the moment
00:21:02.680 | of doing anything in Venezuela
00:21:06.320 | because of visa restrictions and things like that.
00:21:09.680 | It's just, it's the security situation is very poor.
00:21:12.720 | It's a very unsafe place to travel
00:21:15.360 | without special protection
00:21:17.440 | and without special dispensation
00:21:20.260 | from the government authorities.
00:21:21.500 | And so I can't do it,
00:21:22.340 | I can't involve anybody at this point in time in Venezuela.
00:21:27.260 | I have thought and looked and thought,
00:21:29.060 | okay, well, maybe we would do something in Colombia.
00:21:31.180 | Maybe we would, I could organize some kind of event
00:21:33.740 | and provide more publicity and public figure
00:21:37.700 | and invite the Radical Personal Finance family
00:21:39.900 | to do something in Colombia on the border.
00:21:42.940 | But I don't see any opportunity for that
00:21:47.360 | at this point in time.
00:21:48.620 | So that's what it is.
00:21:52.000 | And so basically, I care a lot about charity
00:21:56.760 | and I don't know a lot about it.
00:22:00.360 | I find it easier to find problems
00:22:02.920 | with things that are done poorly
00:22:06.620 | than to actually suggest solutions
00:22:09.200 | of things that are being done well.
00:22:11.360 | And I don't wanna be the guy,
00:22:12.600 | I hate being the guy who comes out here
00:22:14.480 | and just pokes problem, problem, problem, problem
00:22:17.520 | at good, intelligent, good-hearted people
00:22:20.560 | who are trying to solve problems.
00:22:21.880 | Just because things are inefficient,
00:22:23.800 | just because things are difficult
00:22:26.480 | doesn't mean that we should come out
00:22:27.480 | and find problems with them.
00:22:32.200 | They're trying.
00:22:33.960 | But I also think that we need
00:22:35.160 | to be really working hard on this
00:22:36.520 | because the world of charity and relief
00:22:39.140 | is so fraught with bloat and ineffectiveness
00:22:43.700 | and difficulty and things like that.
00:22:46.220 | And so I'm just trying to prove out for myself
00:22:48.460 | are there some ideas and principles
00:22:50.700 | that could be gained from this?
00:22:52.960 | And maybe at some point in the future
00:22:54.580 | I can share some of those things.
00:22:55.860 | But at the moment, this particular work
00:22:58.300 | has been very effective.
00:22:59.620 | It's been very blessed and I need money.
00:23:03.100 | So I'm coming to you to ask for it.
00:23:04.860 | If you have some money that's available
00:23:07.740 | in your giving budget and you would like
00:23:09.540 | to give it to me for me to pass along
00:23:12.340 | to the people and to purchase the things
00:23:15.420 | that are gonna need to be done,
00:23:17.200 | then that's what it can be used for.
00:23:19.060 | Specifically, I will take your money,
00:23:20.900 | I will use it to purchase agricultural supplies
00:23:24.500 | which will be planting many acres of gardens.
00:23:27.420 | Right now we're targeting to plant about 120 new acres
00:23:30.060 | across more than a dozen prisons across Venezuela.
00:23:33.940 | We've got quite a lot of stuff prepared for it.
00:23:37.860 | And if we can raise enough money,
00:23:41.340 | then we can continue to see this program multiply
00:23:44.300 | and grow significantly.
00:23:46.700 | And it's been a real tool to provide some very needed relief
00:23:51.700 | for men who are hungry and need food
00:23:57.420 | and for men who are idle and need work.
00:24:00.500 | So if you trust me and you would like to be involved
00:24:03.120 | and help partner with me in that work,
00:24:05.020 | then I would ask you to go to the link
00:24:06.940 | in the show notes or the description
00:24:09.520 | for today's podcast episode.
00:24:11.360 | Again, you can use a credit card to donate
00:24:12.980 | using a Stripe page that I've set up
00:24:14.660 | or you can send me money on PayPal.
00:24:16.180 | Both of those are fine.
00:24:17.620 | I can't collect any physical donations at the moment.
00:24:20.580 | I need electronic money.
00:24:22.000 | I can't give you any kind of tax deduction.
00:24:24.200 | You won't receive any tax deduction for your contributions
00:24:27.500 | because as I said,
00:24:29.340 | there's no tax deductible organization.
00:24:32.080 | I have arranged it in the past.
00:24:34.000 | If you are going to give a significant amount of money,
00:24:38.400 | in the previous fundraising effort,
00:24:41.200 | we had a donor who donated a five-figure sum,
00:24:43.840 | which we were able to pass through
00:24:47.100 | an appropriate tax-exempt organization.
00:24:49.900 | So if you would like to donate a five-figure sum,
00:24:53.380 | then contact me.
00:24:54.660 | You can email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com,
00:24:57.820 | and I can use an appropriate tax-exempt entity
00:25:02.540 | to provide stewardship for those specific funds.
00:25:06.580 | And those specific funds, what we did in the past
00:25:09.260 | was I used the money to buy a vehicle.
00:25:12.180 | And so we were able to have a proper paper trail
00:25:15.900 | following all the laws for organized charities.
00:25:20.900 | And so we were able to do it as was necessary.
00:25:24.940 | So if you would like to donate five figures to me,
00:25:27.660 | then reach out to me before you do that,
00:25:30.100 | joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.
00:25:32.540 | But I don't need very many five-figure donations.
00:25:35.060 | I'd rather just have more modest
00:25:37.920 | three and four-figure donations using the link.
00:25:41.500 | And I'll take the money, I'll pass it along,
00:25:44.260 | and use it to purchase the supplies and be the steward of it.
00:25:47.620 | I will give reports on that as well in the future.
00:25:50.160 | You'll see as things happen.
00:25:52.820 | And I'll try to, one of the best things is,
00:25:56.140 | I feel more comfortable sharing
00:25:57.540 | about a lot of this stuff personally.
00:25:58.900 | So like we did at Radical Personal Finance Family Camp,
00:26:02.380 | if you come to a family camp,
00:26:04.020 | and I'll show you pictures of what we've done in Venezuela,
00:26:08.140 | things like that.
00:26:09.300 | So also pray for me.
00:26:12.420 | Like I said, I'll be there personally for a conference
00:26:14.760 | and touring some of the prisons here in a few weeks.
00:26:18.300 | And so it's difficult when you're a father of five,
00:26:21.680 | it's difficult to go to a place like Venezuela
00:26:24.420 | and feel like you're making the right decision.
00:26:27.700 | But it's something that I believe is important.
00:26:30.220 | And so I would ask for your prayers as well.
00:26:33.700 | Thank you very much.