When her younger brother Josh called her at work she told him she’d call him back, but she didn’t.

He died a few days later.

While helping to clean out his apartment, she found a thank-you card he would have sent to her had she bothered to call him back with her address.

He died seven years ago and, in his death, planted a seed of hope that would one day connect two distant continents.

She thought it was tragic the way he sought happiness from substance in a world so beautiful.

“If only you’d seen the Rocky Mountains!” she yelled at his ghost in anger.

She knew then, and still knows, that his drug overdose wasn’t her fault, but she will forever wonder if she could have made a difference.

Wen people ask Stacey Monk why she went to Africa, she says that she thinks she went for Josh, to see all that he hadn’t.

Months before her first trip to Tanzania, she lived in San Francisco and worked as a consultant.

Walking to her car after a live performance of the play Doubt, she came across a homeless man who looked to be in his 60s.

It was bitterly cold and he had no shoes.

Stacey later learned that his shoes were stolen while he slept at a shelter the previous night.

The man asked Stacey and her theater companion, Sanjay Patel, for help.

After overcoming their initial, natural, (and mutual) distrust, the man got in their car and while they drove, he told Stacey and Sanjay his story.

He’d been a bicycle courier for decades but had been replaced by someone faster and younger.

He looked for another job, but his age and lack of experience left him unemployed for months.

He lost his apartment and, rather than embarrass himself and burden his family, he chose to live on the streets.

“It’s not easy to apply for jobs when you have no clean clothes, no address for the application, no place to bathe. I don’t smell good,” he said.

Stacey left the man in the warm and running car while she bought him blankets, a fleece jacket, thick socks, slippers and anything she saw that looked warm.

Back in the car, she unpacked the bag and passed its contents to the homeless man.

He put everything on.

Then he started to cry.

And so did Stacey.

When she asked where he needed to go, he directed her to a shelter where he would sleep if he could get in.

She tried to give him money and her business card, but he refused.

“You’ve done too much already,” he said and disappeared around the corner.

Stacey drove one block, stopped the car, got out and walked back around the corner where she found him weeping on the ground.

He stood up, and this time he took her card though he has never called.

Stacey and Sanjay  stayed up all night thinking about how different the world would be if all giving were as intimate as their encounter with the homeless man.

They wondered whether the man hadn’t given them a gift in the telling of his life story.

Perhaps their gift of warm clothes wasn’t so much an act of charity as an attempt at fair compensation.

Stacey and Sanjay wondered if they could somehow help other people share their stories to those who might offer direct support.

A seed, planted by Stacey’s brother Josh, stirred from the numbing slumber of grief.

Stacey traveled to Tanzania, perhaps called by the spirit of her brother and all that he missed in his short life.

Somehow, Josh, the homeless man or some unnameable force led Stacy to Mama Lucy, a school teacher in rural Tanzania, battling obstacles of incredible poverty to educate the children of her community.

It was here that the seed finally pushed through the soil and Stacey founded Epic Change, an organization amplifying the individual voices of grassroots change makers and social entrepreneurs. Epic Change highlights the impact these remarkable individuals are achieving in order to raise funds that support their extraordinary efforts.

Stacey Monk is also the Founder of TweetsGiving, an online fundraising campaign that raises money to help Mama Lucy build and improve the school system in Tanzania.

In her own words,

There is no greater gratitude than that of hope restored when you’ve all but given up.

Hope is not idle faith, but hard work.

It is saving for months to scrape shillings together to buy a tiny piece of land.

It is building classrooms from hen houses.

Hope is not easy to create.

Hope is holding on fast when the whole wide world and every fiber of your weary being says to give up.

I’m not sure how in this whole, vast, beautiful universe, I found a hope like hers.

But I did. And I only wish she could know how grateful I am.

Stacey hopes that her work with Epic Change can pay some small tribute to both her brother’s memory as well as the way a story can inspire understanding, hope, action and real change.

Right now, Epic Change is planning a Mother’s Day surprise for Mama Lucy, an effort to help her achieve her dream to build a children’s home on the campus of the school she built with investments from Epic Change.

You can help change the world this Mother’s Day by honoring a mama you love and sharing how much your care on the site www.ToMamaWithLove.org.

Follow Stacey Monk on Twitter at and Epic Change at .