‘Fear is Useless; What is Needed is Trust’

“Can one person change the world?” asks author Jim Ziolkowski in the subtitle of his Christopher Award-winning book Walk in Their Shoes. Well, consider his story.

Ziolkowski grew up in Michigan in a family that modeled faith and service. His father loved the Catholic faith so much that, as a young man, he hitchhiked from Grand Rapids to Gethsemane, Kentucky, so he could hang out with Thomas Merton and experience Mass with the Trappists. Meanwhile, Jim’s mother would take him and his siblings to a local nursing home to spend time with seniors who never received any visitors.

After graduating college, Ziolkowski hitchhiked around the world for a year, spending a lot of time in developing countries. He visited India and Nepal only to feel overwhelmed by the poverty he witnessed there. One day, however, he passed through a village where they were celebrating the opening of a school.

During an interview on Christopher Closeup, Ziolkowski recalled, “Now I’m not just seeing the injustice of extreme poverty, I’m seeing the hope, determination, and courage that these community members had around education. When I came back to the States, I saw poverty in our own country in a much different way, especially in American inner cities. I saw that same thread of hope and courage in American youth that I saw in Nepal, and so I wanted to act on these experiences. But I totally chickened out! I took a fast-track job with GE, and it took me 15 months to work the courage up to leave and start buildOn.”

Ziolkowski started his nonprofit, called buildOn, out of the kitchen of his parents’ house. The initial mission was to build three schools in poor areas of three different continents, using inner-city youth from America to help do it. Beyond good intentions, Ziolkowski had no experience “fundraising, mobilizing communities in developing countries, building schools, or working with urban youth.” He felt paralyzed by fear, until one night he opened his Bible and read the two sentences that turned his life around: “Fear is useless. What is needed is trust.”

Jesus’s words from the gospel of Mark gave Ziolkowski the courage to move forward and put everything in God’s hands. Twenty-two years later, they’ve come a long way. He says, “In developing countries, we’ve built 618 schools; villagers have contributed over 1.1 million work days to build those schools.” The inner-city youth that get involved come from 62 of “the toughest urban high schools in America,” from Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, the South Bronx and Philadelphia.

Their efforts aren’t exclusive to foreign work, though. “We mobilize kids to transform their communities through service,” explained Ziolkowski. “They go out and work with elders, like I used to when I was a kid. They work with folks that are HIV positive and have AIDS, they spend time with little children who have physical disabilities, they work with adults with developmental disabilities.”

Another positive outcome for young people in the buildOn programs is that 94 percent of them graduate and go to college. Most interestingly for Ziolkowski was the discovery that when these kids get involved in the program, “they don’t have a sense of control over their lives or their future. There’s so much chaos and violence in the community. When they get involved, they realize what they can accomplish. They elevate expectations for themselves and gain a sense of hope.”

So can one person change the world? Jim Ziolkowski proves the answer is yes!

(This essay is this week's “Light One Candle” column, written by Tony Rossi, of The Christophers; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.)

Background information:

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