Remember that old saying, “Into every life some rain must fall”? If it’s true, then the measure of a life might be how well we deal with our rain.
That is definitely the case with Robert Freeman, a California retiree who went from homelessness as a teenager to founding and running an international nonprofit that has helped millions of the poorest children in the world.
In high school, Robert’s parents divorced. His mother said, “Go live with him.” His father said, “Go live with her.” He ended up falling through the cracks.
He found himself sleeping in the back seats of unlocked cars to stay out of the rain. As luck would have it, Robert’s high school chemistry teacher figured it out and told him that he could sleep on her couch. That’s how he graduated from high school, in 1971.
He joined the Merchant Marines because, as he said, “It was three hots and a cot.” It was a home. For six years, he sailed the world’s seas and learned shipbuilding.
In Oregon, in 1979, while working in a shipyard, he met his future wife. She was on her way to Stanford Law School. Robert went along.
While she was studying Contracts and Civil Procedure, he completed his college degree at a different, nearby school. He was 28, the “old man” in his class. It was 1981.
In Silicon Valley, the personal computer industry was taking off. Robert joined and worked furiously to make up time. To speed up his catch-up, he earned an MBA from Stanford.
Once again, he was the “old man” in his class: 35.
Within six years, he became Vice President, International Marketing, at one of the largest software companies in the world. It was far from sleeping in the back seats of cars.
But, something was nagging at him.
He had told his chemistry teacher that once he had made it, he would pay her back, by becoming a teacher himself and helping students as she had helped him. When was he going to fulfill that promise?
While on a sabbatical in 2000, he called down to the local high school and asked if they needed any math teachers. They said, “Can you come down tomorrow?”
He went down, was finger printed and breathalyzed, and was teaching Euclidean Geometry the next day. He loved it, and never looked back.
In 2007, he wanted to show his students the power they had to change the world. He challenged the school that if they would all put in one dollar, he would get a classroom built for them in Africa. His school had 1,770 students at the time. They put in $1,851.
That spring, he raised $9,000 from 9,000 teenagers at five schools. He went on to build his first classroom ever, in Naro Moru, Kenya. Thus was born The Global Uplift Project.
Soon, he was building classrooms in Nepal, Nicaragua, South Africa, Indonesia, and other developing countries. He expanded to include science labs, playgrounds, libraries, latrines—whatever it took to provide a better learning environment for the world’s poorest children.
Today, 18 years later, The Global Uplift Project has completed more than 500 educational projects in 26 developing world countries. Over their duration, they will help more than 3 million of the world’s poorest children have just a slightly better chance in life.
Today, Robert is 70 years old. He reflects, “It’s the rain—the hardship—that waters the potential of every living thing. And every one of us has a rainbow inside of themselves trying to get out.”
