PPB December 2019

grinding the bones or drinking the blood of an albino can bring wealth, luck, prosperity or special powers. Tragically, after being cast out of their villages, many of these children are hunted, kidnapped and sold on the black market. Brown is actively trying to improve the conditions, lives and experiences of these children. Brown recalls an experience he’s witnessed time and time again, that’s stuck with him about the power of bringing promo products to the Malawian people. The children are fed at feeding stations, which is basically a big dirt field at a hospital or church, headed by volunteers, who cook nsima, a cornmeal porridge, in a giant pot over a simple fire for hours. Each plate of nsima is shared by five or six children. During mealtimes, Brown has thrown out three or four soccer balls for some 100 children to play with, and watched it add joy to their day. “A soccer ball needs no explanation, no story. You just blow it up, and kick it on the field, and everyone starts smiling and running around—and they had a good day.” Brown is currently planning his sixth trip toMalawi in June 2021, with hopes to bring along industry friends for the ride, and his 12th and 13th trips toMexico in April 2020 and April 2021. He is looking to invite a company or executives who are interested in extreme team-building and giveback, and is welcoming industry professionals who are interested to contact himdirectly. He’s also looking to create, curate and host annual trips toMexico as a “team-building event on steroids for a company that wants to do something really unusual.” It’s a plan, he says, that fits in with the triple-bottom line—people, planet and profit—and one that profoundly changed his life. “Life is more than just commerce, and I had to get to be older to realize that life is an incredible gift—and I love commerce. I love being an entrepreneur—40 years of promotional products—but it’s more than commerce and it’s more than accumulating stuff. We have to connect with the human condition,” he says. “To be a blind, albino orphan in sub-equatorial Africa, or to be a rural, poverty- stricken, multi-generational family of 11 in central Mexico who weep when we build the 11-foot-by-22- foot powerless shed because it’s better than the makeshift tarp and tires they sleep in—this helps me to shut up and thank God for my wife andmy life.” Donations can be made to the Chilanga School for the Blind in Malawi, Africa, by visiting the GoFundMe page created by Brown: https://www.gofundme . com/f/Orhaned-and-Blind- in-Malawai. The link includes a video about the school, the children being helped and more about Brown’s mission for the upcoming Malawi trip. Danielle Renda is associate editor of PPB . On Rod Brown's trips to Malawi, he brings plenty of pens—a luxury item for those who live there. “Over a 50-to-60- year adult lifespan, if I can contribute a course-correction to goodness, light, sharing andhumanity, at somemicroscopic level, it becomes amplified over their lifetimes and can really change [the students'] lives.” | DECEMBER 2019 | 93 THINK