From Liverpool comes the story of a son who decided to donate the inheritance of his mother to make his city a better place.
When David Clarke lost his mother in a cycling accident, he was devastated. He inherited roughly $125,000 from her, but she transferred something else to him as well: a sense of civic responsibility.
“She had a huge social conscience and was interested in the world and how it worked—a lot of my moral framework comes from her,” Clarke told the Guardian.
Feeling like he should do something that reflected the woman’s values, he wrote to 600 neighbors in his postcode of L8 and asked their opinion: what should he do with this windfall?
Only 38 people wrote back, and of these, Clarke formed a committee that nominated 4 different Liverpool charities who would each receive a quarter of the inheritance (£25,000).
Team Oasis and Liverpool Kids Plant to Plate are two of the charities that received money from Clarke.
The former is based in one of Liverpool’s poorest areas and provides free meals to families and organizes workshops for dance, football, photography, or other rewarding activities. Half of the children that depend on Team Oasis are considered physically disabled, or living with special needs and/or mental health challenges.
The charity’s director Paul Nilson called the donation “such a blessing.” Some of the money was used to fund RV holidays in sea towns like Blackpool, a traditional English family getaway that these families might never otherwise experience.
“I could never get to places like that on my own with my kids,” Gemma O’Brien, who along with her three kids, frequent Team Oasis; particularly for her eldest son, who had a severe brain injury when he was young and is also autistic.
“They’ve made adjustments for him from day one. He found his passion for music there: he’s self-taught on guitar and piano now. It’s one of the only places where I feel safe and not judged.”
Liverpool Kids Plant to Plate organizes lessons on growing and preparing one’s own food for kids in the urban areas of the city.
“To the guy who’s donated the money, the impact it’s had is out of this world,” O’Brien said.
The story is reminiscent of the ‘democratized philanthropy’ of the Austrian Heiress Marlene Engelhorn, when she nominated 50 Salzburg citizens to give away her $25 million inheritance.
Designated the Good Council for Redistribution, the members, selected at random from a pool of 10,000 people, were offered “a series of lectures including from philosophers and economics professors to inspire their choices,” Euro News reports.
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