EDITORIAL

We can offer hope through charity

11/10/2017

It is easy to be beaten down by an endless cycle of bad news — natural disasters, mass shootings, political discord.

Our choices are to shut off the noise, become depressed by it, or to “lose yourself in the service of others,” as Mahatma Gandhi said.

Former President Barack Obama once said, “The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. ... If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”

Mark Makulinski, the retired president of Lockrey Manufacturing in Toledo, saw reports of raging wildfires in California and hurricanes in Texas and Florida and was moved. But he also saw the tragedies as an opportunity to do something. He has partnered with the Toledo Community Foundation to help repair infrastructure damage done by the fires, Hurricane Harvey, and Hurricane Irma.

Mr. Makulinski will match individual donations made to the Toledo Community Foundation, up to $250,000. Donors can designate that their donations go to charities in the Florida Keys, Florida’s Collier County, the Miami area and Carribean, Houston, or California’s Mendocino County. The deadline to donate is Nov. 30.

“I tell people who call me generous that I honestly believe that when I give something, I get back ten-fold. And it is not necessarily in money,” Mr. Makulinski told The Blade’s editorial board.

There is also another motive behind his efforts.

 “There has been so much divisiveness in the last six months to a year that maybe this will bring people together,” Mr. Makulinski said.

Mr. Makulinski’s example inspires us. May more of us, perhaps in smaller ways, emulate him.