NEW YORK—If you run into a man holding a jar of parasitic worms in Washington Square Park asking for a donation, don’t be alarmed. It’s just Aaron Jackson. He is trying to save all the children in Haiti—and he could really use your help.
Jackson is soliciting donations for Planting Peace, the non-profit he co-founded in 2004, which raises money for de-worming medication for children in Haiti and around the globe. As Jackson tells those who stop and listen to his pitch, parasitic worms grow in the bellies of kids in poverty-stricken places like Haiti, eating up to 20 percent of the child’s nutrition, leaving them anemic and lethargic.
Jackson has seen the effect of the medication on these children in as little as 24 hours after taking it, and it is that reaction that drives him to raise money. “You see kids awaken, right away. They come to life. I say to myself, ‘Wow that only cost a penny or 1.5 cents,’” Jackson said. “For one coffee from Starbucks, I could de-worm 333 kids. It really makes you think.”
Jackson’s journey to Haiti’s children started when he was a teenager living by the finely manicured grass of Sandestin golf resort in Miramar Beach, Fla. His stepfather was a pro-golfer and his grandfather a resort developer.
Jackson started playing golf at age 13 and was hooked from the moment he picked up the clubs, often skipping school to get in 36 holes of golf six or seven days a week.
“I thought about golf 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was my goal to become a professional golfer,” Jackson said. He wanted to play for a charity or for the poor.
Instead, at age 17, he ran away from home and traveled the country helping the homeless along the way, putting them up in hotel rooms, buying them clothes, and feeding them. Jackson said it was his first effort in putting his desire to help into action.
Helping Haiti
In the early 2000s Jackson was living in Miami and working with Homeless Voice, an organization set up to assist homeless people become self-reliant.
While driving one day, he heard a radio report about a famine in Haiti. Through his work with Homeless Voice he had access to a food bank and knew he could purchase one ton of food for $300.
“I was extremely naive, but to me, it was simple mathematics. One ton of food for $300, everybody should be jumping on this,” Jackson said laughing.
He sent out approximately 1,000 letters to churches around the nation asking them to sponsor one ton of food, hoping he could get 100 tons sponsored.
One church responded, offering to sponsor two tons. “If they would not have sent that money, it is possible I would have given up, maybe not altogether, but moved on to something else,” Jackson said.
With a $600 check in hand, he knew he had to live up to his end of the bargain and deliver the food to Haiti. Jackson began to research how to transport the food, but soon found out why no one was already doing it—customs fees were in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Jackson bought medicine with the money instead and enlisted the help of family friend Dr. Chuck Presti to administer the medication. With financial support from the Homeless Voice, Jackson donated $1,500 to start a feeding program.
Jackson and his small group went to Cité Soleil, the largest slum in Port au Prince, for three days. Jackson said his group was often asked for extra money and was even charged $1,500 for a 50-pound bag of rice and a 50-pound bag of beans.
Jackson was put off by this but before long met up with John Dieubon, a local man who had translated for the group. The two were in the break room one afternoon and began discussing Dieubon’s plan for opening up an education center for children.
The two instantly clicked.
On Jackson’s final day Dieubon had to leave early, but thanked Jackson for helping his people.
At dinner that evening, Jackson told the group how impressed he was with Dieubon but had forgotten to get his contact information. Serendipitously, not 10 minutes later, Jackson looked up to see Dieubon at a nearby table. He rushed over and they exchanged information.
Planting Peace
After a short stint in New York City, Jackson was ready to open his own charity. He called Dieubon; they co-founded the non-profit Planting Peace, and their first project was building an orphanage in Haiti. In Miami, Jackson ran across a wealthy Haitian who was in the U.S. on asylum. He donated land to Jackson for the school in Saint-Louis-du-Sud by Les Cayes.
Jackson and Dieubon traveled to Saint-Louis-du-Sud for a month to build the school and by the end of the trip they were flat broke. On the last day Jackson asked Dieubon why many of the children he saw had distended bellies. Dieubon told him it was due to parasitic worms.
Jackson had never heard of such a thing and was disgusted, but asked Dieubon how much it would cost to treat the children. Dieubon said that with a cab ride to a nearby doctor, the doctor’s fee, and medicine it would cost $20.
“That night I was going though some dirty clothes and I came across a $20 bill I didn’t even realize I had,” Jackson said. He had no money for a cab back to Port au Prince, but decided he could hitchhike.
After consulting with Dieubon, Jackson picked out a child with a distended belly and gave the mother $20, while Dieubon gave the mother instructions.
The next day, as Dieubon and Jackson took off to the airport, the mother came up to him crying and thanking him. “The doctor told her the child would have passed away from worms clogging his intestines,” Jackson said. “It really got me thinking. If that mother would not have come up to me, I don’t know if I would have gotten involved in de-worming. It really impacted me.”
Jackson has traveled to Haiti 25 times, but this was the trip that really changed his life.
Stomp the Worm
After his profound experience, Jackson shifted his focus to de-worming the children of Haiti through a Planting Peace project they named “Stomp the Worm.” He soon found that not many people shared his vision.
Jackson was frustrated, especially knowing the medication only cost five cents. But he pushed on, telling his friend Sean Cononie, president of Homeless Voice, one evening that it was his intent to de-worm all of Haiti with the change in people’s couch cushions. Cononie, a wealthy man, donated one quarter to Jackson’s cause.
“My desk was right next to his. I was like, ‘I will show him.’ I taped that first quarter above my desk on a cabinet,” Jackson said. “Literally the next day, someone called and said, ‘I read a story about you, and I would like to give you the money to donate 1 million doses of medication.’”
After the phone call Jackson went back to Cononie and said, “Your quarter really started a little movement! I got a million doses raised since you gave me this quarter!”
The following day Jackson went to a church that already supported the orphanage, and it sponsored 150,000 doses of medication. Cononie followed up by donating 300,000 doses and in two days Jackson had 1.7 million doses.
“That is how it usually is in anything in life. When you go to people and tell them, ‘This is my dream,’ people are [passive]. But when it is moving, people want to be a part of that. One million, it took me years to get. The rest took me less than 48 hours.”
CNN found out about Jackson’s cause, and he won a CNN Heroes award in 2007. He was interviewed by Larry King, and during the interview, Planting Peace raised $100,000.
To date, Jackson and his organization have de-wormed 13 million children, including 8 million last year. He has de-wormed 6 million children in Haiti alone, with the rest in countries including North Korea, Sudan, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Guatemala.
The organization currently has 3 million doses of medication waiting to be shipped to Haiti but cannot get past customs.
Jackson hopes, much like his hero Jimmy Carter, he can make a difference for those less fortunate than him. He has a goal of de-worming 1 million children a month and is hitting the New York City streets hard to meet the challenge.
Jackson’s motivation is the knowledge that for 10 cents, he can dramatically change people’s lives. “It is really bothersome to me that that is going on. It is important to me to make people aware of it,” Jackson said. “I am not saying that people here shouldn’t drink their coffee or these little things, but at the end of the day, the reality is with the cost of a pack of cigarettes, I could de-worm a whole community.”
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