Roy Exum: The Sleepless In Seattle

  • Wednesday, November 19, 2014
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

I am hardly a technophile, but somewhere down the line I became fascinated with a crowd-funding website called Indiegogo. Every once in a while I’ll pop in to marvel at the cleverness of the people who live among us and yesterday, almost by accident, I crossed paths via the website with a beautiful guy named Eddie Wang.

Eddie just graduated from the University of Washington and is destined to go far. His folks are from Taiwan and, after earning graduate degrees there, they moved to the United States where his dad does real well working for Microsoft in Redmond, Wash.

When they sent their son to college, he was well-grounded and his Christian faith explain why he earned a double major in economics and social work.

In his freshman year, he became aware of Seattle’s homeless. “You can’t walk down The Ave without noticing the homeless,” he recalled so he was kind to them. For the past several years or so Eddie has been inviting some to the house he rents with several buddies for an occasional dinner. He also has volunteered in a shelter but when he heard about a guy who raised enough money to give away 50 sleeping bags a few months ago, he had a better idea. “I’m a pretty entrepreneurial guy,” he admitted to Seattle columnist Jerry Large.

So what the kid did was set up an account on Indiegogo. Since 2008, Indiegogo has literally distributed hundreds of millions to 275,000 people from 224 countries and territories – “empowering real people just like you to realize their dreams,” the website likes to boast.

Eddie Wang’s dream? To give every homeless person in Seattle and its surrounding King County a sleeping bag. A headcount by volunteers one night last January found 3,123 men, women and children on the streets of Seattle. Can you imagine what that would take

at $20 per sleeping bag?

Or it is more fun to imagine that our Eddie Wang has already raised $39,756, or 80 percent, of his $50,000 goal and with eight days left before his self-imposed deadline of 11:59 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Thanksgiving night, it appears for all the world he will make a spectacular difference in the lives of several thousand who are less fortunate.

“From the start, in my freshman year at UW, I was startled by the contrast of seeing how blessed I was. My parents paid for college. I received so many handouts to get to where I am today. Most of the people on the streets haven’t received nearly that much,” he told a reporter. “We often look past what we’ve been given.”

An anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $25,000 matching fund. Anyone who makes a donation now on Indiegogo will be providing two sleeping bags, not one, for just $20. Add the $25,000 matching gift with the $50,000 Eddie hopes to raise by next Thursday night and it amounts to – voila! – 3,750 sleeping bags, enough for every homeless person in all of Seattle and the whole county as well.

Eddie is the first to realize a sleeping bag will hardly address the problems homeless persons face “but it’s pretty important because we all have basic needs. A warm place to sleep is something we take for granted every night.”

Eddie has already learned a lot from this experience. “People just don't know that there's real people out here, just like you and me, who have stories to share. People worth loving. I think it would just be powerful as a community to rally around it, say we as a city, we as a county. We care about the people, we want to take care of the people in our backyard."

Soon the fun part will begin. Already he’s crafting plans for “The Big Give.” On Dec. 13 – a Saturday – Eddie will oversee a team of 200 volunteers who, between 3 o’clock that afternoon until 9:30 that night, will seek out the homeless and present each with a warm sleeping bag – no questions asked or any answers wanted. The volunteers will be split into group of four, led by a leader who has experience working with the homeless, and accompanied by three workers who are in for the day of their life.

Just so you’ll know, the final push will include an appeal in the Seattle Times next Monday and the area’s top TV station – King 5 – will do a mini-documentary on Tuesday. PinkaBella’s cupcakes are giving 3,750 gourmet treats – one with each bag – and Columbia Sportswear has already sent 200 woolen beanie hats. There is also a benefit dinner that just sprang up and from all appearances it seems our “entrepreneurial” Eddie Wang just might be Seattle’s “Hero of the Year.”

But he wants none of that, not at all. He just wants to be part of “doing something” for others. That said, it is rather fitting that he signs his blog, “Sleepless No More, Eddie.”

I simply adore people like Eddie Wang.

royexum@aol.com


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