Gently Shake Your World

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

It was Gandhi who admonished his generation saying, “In a gentle way you can shake your world.” Gandhi certainly shook his world during his lifetime. While traveling throughout this world I have met my share of passionate persons who have likewise shaken their world in gentle ways.

One of my dearest international friends was Daniel Kalnin. He was born in the mysterious country of Burma. The British had colonized Burma, bordered by China, India, Thailand and a bit of Laos. Burma had become a strategic defense post for the Brits during World War II. But in 1948 Great Britain decided to pull out of Burma and sail home. The vacuum of leadership and stability threw Burma into political, economic and cultural chaos. They had grown to depend on the British rule of law, available health care, and the advantage of international trading. Power struggles, tribal wars and a lot of bloodshed became the rule.

Daniel realized that if he were to see any of his dreams come true he would have to leave Burma. When he was 18 years old he slipped across the Thailand border and became a fugitive. Eventually, some Americans rescued Daniel and brought him to America where he was educated and where he met his Canadian wife, Beverly. Upon graduation the two of them determined to return to Thailand and work with the hill-tribe people who lived on the border of Thailand and northern Burma.

In Thailand Daniel constructed, with the blessing of the King of Thailand, a small housing development. He tested 27 water sources to find an uncontaminated water supply for the village. None could be used. But high in the mountains he discovered a spring of pure water and built a water project of cisterns and pipelines to serve the people. One of the criteria for families to move into his development was to stop cultivating poppies for opium resale, take ownership of some of his land and start growing a cash crop of coffee. Daniel returned briefly to the US and raised money to buy coffee plants. While here he set up distribution outlets to market the new “Hill-Tribe” coffee brand in America. The villagers discovered they could make more money with coffee crops than poppies. Because of the new water system the villagers became dramatically healthier.

I traveled with Daniel on motorbikes over the steep trails of the lower Himalayas along the border of Burma to his new development of Bayasai and the bustling town of Prau. Daniel showed me the large brown church the people had built with a large red cross painted on the front. It was the only place in the insurgency area where the people from five different tribes were living together peacefully.

In the commercial city of Chang Mai, Thailand, Daniel and Beverly had additionally built the “Home of Blessing.” When I first visited the Kalnin’s home in Chang Mai there were 47 “throwaway girls” ages ten through twelve who had been taken from slavery and prostitution and were being housed, loved and educated in that home. But for 30 years Daniel had been estranged from his family and beloved homeland of Burma. Eventually, Project C.U.R.E. was privileged to join Daniel in returning to Burma and seeing his dreams come true in establishing the highly effective “Barefoot Doctors” organization that has saved literally thousands of the lives of the hill-tribe villagers and citizens of Thailand and Burma.

My dear friend Daniel recently died and I am still grieving the loss. This article is written to the honor of Daniel, his family and his never ending life’s work. Today, I salute him as a true champion because in a gentle way Daniel shook his world!

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Gratitude

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

When I was a kid we used the word “dibs” a lot. I had dibs on sitting next to the door in the backseat of the family Buick on the way to church. I had dibs on the classroom’s leather football for the morning recess. When I was playing little league baseball I had dibs on the mahogany stained Louisville slugger bat with the electrical tape on the handle. I presumed that those positions or objects were sort of birthrights to me and I presumed everybody else had that figured out as well. I never really owned them. I never did anything to deserve them, and I was never really thankful for them . . . I just put “dibs” on them.

Today, my native culture has graduated to a new level of sophistication. I look around and see my fellow travelers speeding down a newly paved freeway that allows for a much higher speed limit of cultural expression. I still sense the same spirit of “I dibs it,” but now I sense a frightening new power of selfish expression from the driver’s seat of the runaway vehicle. Instead of saying, “I dibs it,” I hear it repeated in rapid-fire sequence, “I deserve this . . . I’m entitled to this!” “Do it for me now!”

If you look closely enough the seeds of tragedy can be found in the “I dibs it” statement. But the unraveling of civility can be found in the concept of “I’m entitled to this.” Recompense from a position of entitlement separates you from the attitude of gratitude. Why would you consider giving thanks for something that was due you and should have been given to you even earlier? But, Oh, how pleasing it is to hear the sincere and simple expression of gratitude from a meek and unassuming source.

A couple of years ago Project C.U.R.E. teamed up with the Black Lion Hospital in Addis Abba, Ethiopia. Thousands of children in the area were dying each year with cardiac pulmonary problems brought on by a variety of African childhood diseases. We were able to install the very first cardiac catheterization equipment for children in the whole of East Africa, along with all the necessary supplies. The heart surgeons there are now saving the lives of about two thousand little kids each year!

Recently, NBC Nightly News and Brian Williams dispatched reporter, Michael Okwu and a crew from Burbank, CA to follow up on our project. First, they visited the Denver headquarters of Project C.U.R.E., then the crew traveled to Addis Abba and the Black Lion Hospital. There, they interviewed little Teclemec’s mother. Teclemec was five years old and dying because her pulmonary artery was so narrow it obstructed the normal blood flow. “She didn’t eat or sleep,” her mother said. “She was a very sick little girl.” Then the Ethiopian heart surgeons worked their procedures and gave Teclemec a second chance to live.

In the news video clip Teclemec, with sparkling eyes and a most engaging smile, speaks through the translators, “Now I can play and now I can run. Now I can do anything I want to do.” It is a perfect picture of a little girl with a million dollar smile and a mother with a heart full of simple appreciation. In the news segment Teclemec shyly dips her head to the cameramen, and with the countenance of an angel she simply says . . . “Thanks!”

Oh, how refreshing. How beautiful. How rewarding, because, Gratitude is the soul’s expression of non-entitlement. 

To view the NBC News Clip in its entirety please click below:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

The Colonel and Her Children

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

It wasn’t a sprint . . . it was a full throttle marathon race across the heartland of Vietnam. This race took me from government meetings with the People’s Party leaders in Hanoi, south to Da Nang, further south to Quang Nam Province, then to meeting Ministry of Health officials, hospital directors and Vietnam Charity Directors. I was assessing scores of Vietnam hospitals where surgery rooms were dangerously inadequate, hospital laboratories devoid of either lab equipment or supplies and discouraged doctors literally begging for medical goods.

When I reached Qn Du Province, the conversations were periodically punctuated with the name “Colonel Thuong Tuong Vi.” I presumed the person to be a Vietnamese military man until I heard someone say “Madame Vi.” Madame Vi was a respected icon and at the same time a mystery woman. When we reached the city of Tam Ky I was informed that we had been extended a special invitation to meet Colonel Thuong Tuong Vi at the “Mercy Center for Performing Arts.”

Thuong Tuong Vi was a full Colonel in the Vietnamese Army, a past member of the Central Committee of the People’s Party and a high profile citizen of the Hanoi cultural society. But, additionally, she was one of Vietnam’s most renowned artistic performers. She was a professional singer and dancer, and had received countless awards for her talents, especially for her entertaining of the military and the People’s Party members.

Madame Vi, however, had become a devout Christian. The change in her life intrigued the Communist Party elite as her comrades watched her go out and collect disadvantaged children from the streets and bring them into her “Mercy Centers for Performing Arts. “I no longer wanted fame and attention,” she told me. “I only had a burning desire to help other people, especially young, disadvantaged children.” Her Center in Tam Ky housed 72 children, in Da Nang she was housing and training 120, and in Hanoi 180 orphans were being housed and trained in the performing arts.

Anna Marie and I were met at the door of the Tam Ky Center by Madame Vi. She was elegant, dignified and graceful. She ushered us into a well-appointed conference room. While we were getting acquainted, Madame Vi shared with us that it was her dream to have Project C.U.R.E. establish and equip a small clinic for the children in each of her Centers. “I want to provide the best for my children, because one day they will be our new leaders. I want them to see and feel what is possible.”

Madame Vi then escorted us upstairs to a small performing theater. When seated, she leaned over and whispered, “God showed me that one day I would no longer have my talents and my beautiful voice, and that I should take those talents now and transfer them into orphans, homeless children, and crippled children who otherwise would have no hope of a good future.” A handsome young Vietnamese boy stepped forward on the stage and welcomed us in flawless English.

The first songs were traditional Vietnamese folk songs, performed beautifully with graceful choreography and hand signing. The mini-concert continued with the words, “In a moment like this, I think of a song, I think of a song about Jesus.” I looked around in amazement. The sound, quality and harmonies were overwhelming. Each word was phonetically sung in perfect English. There was not a smidgeon of doubt that the famed performer had poured her life and talents into the previous urchins. The meticulously trained young singers communicated with warm smiles, direct and sparkling eye contact, vibrant body language and stage presence. They ended the presentation with two familiar Christmas carols and the song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands!” I took my eyes off the kids and looked around again. Everyone in the room was crying! It was a performance I shall never forget.

When the performance was over we were once again directed to the conference room where they had prepared lovely dishes of hot Vietnamese snack foods and tea for us. There, I promised Madame Vi that I would help her get her clinics for the Centers. I also asked her about what her People’s Party friends thought about her selection of songs.

“I teach diversity of culture,” she said. “I teach the underprivileged children perfect English. The officials love it. I first teach the children to sing the songs phonetically. While learning the lyrics they begin to ask questions about what the song writer was saying. I just simply answer all their questions so that they can sing the songs with understanding and feeling. Strangely, they all fall in love.”

“You see,” Colonel Thuong Tuong Vi confided to me, “I can’t go back and start a new beginning, but I can start today and make a new ending!”

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

You Can't Do That!

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

Indeed, you would be a wealthy person today if you would have received $20 for every time somebody hollered in your ear, “You can’t do that!” I’ve never figured out who it is that appoints and empowers all those guardians of the culture who are so intent on policing your possibilities. But there certainly is no shortage of volunteers who are eager to tell you not only that “you can’t,” but also give you “viable” reasons why you can’t.

I have discovered, however, that one of the greatest joys in life is accomplishing something that other people adamantly declare cannot be accomplished. There seems to be within the nature of mankind a spirit that resists the declaration of the impossible. We want to keep turning the tumblers of the combination lock until we hear that magical “click” that opens the hasp.

The intriguing history of Project C.U.R.E. is a simple sequence of happenings and miracles that people declared up and down would not and could not take place. I recall the prodigious occasion of my receiving a personal invitation from Great Leader Kim IL Sung to travel to North Korea and join him in celebrating his 81st birthday. I would be required to obtain a visa to be able to travel to Pyongyang.

Let your imagination run as to the reaction of the staff persons in charge of the “Korea Desk” at the Department of State Building in Washington D.C. when we informed them of the personal invitation and the simple request for help in securing a visa to Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “No, you don’t have a personal invitation from North Korea. We can’t get anybody into Pyongyang. You will be held hostage there. It is a Hermit Country and you can’t go there! We are here to keep people like you from creating an international incident.”

Well, it’s been about 19 years since my first trip to DPRK. I have returned eight times and, believe it or not, the US State Department even entrusted some of the top DPRK decision makers to me and allowed them to come to Colorado and stay in our guest house. We have taken millions of dollars worth of medical goods to the needy people of that country. I was there when the dam broke on the Yalu River and tens of millions of dollars worth of damage occurred. We were the only ones to go to their aid. And there is a certain sense of pleasure that comes when I hold in my hand the first shipping license issued to Project C.U.R.E. by the U.S. Commerce Department and Department of State to deliver ocean going cargo containers of donated medical goods directly into the North Korean port of Nampo.

I believe that one day in the not-too-distant future there will be a grand reunification of the two Koreas. I have even presented to the United Nations a paper encouraging those possibilities. But always in my ears I hear people saying, “That can’t be done . . . you simply can’t be a part of that!” And traditional logic and perceived reality would robustly second that motion . . . “That can’t happen!”

But I have a word of encouragement for you today. If you cradle a dream in your heart and you desperately believe that dream can take wings and fly like an eagle, and you have dedicated yourself and your creative energies to seeing that dream become reality, then, pick up that combination lock again, embrace it and begin turning the tumblers with gentle passion until you hear that God-sent “click” resound in your heart. Can you imagine the joy and excitement of seeing the hasp of that lock fall open and with your own eyes, what others had declared, “That can’t happen, ”. . . you actually see become reality?

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

Improve Your World

by Dr. James W. Jackson
Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

In her diary, Anne Frank documents the horrors of Nazi Germany and her life of hiding, capture and efforts to survive in a concentration camp. Her wholesome attitudes and keen observations of life continue to amaze her diary readers even today. One of her statements leaves me defenseless and convicted: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” She is right!

I am so appreciative to have had people in my life who were determined to make this world a better place, regardless of all the reasons imposed on them why they could not. Two such people were my aunt and uncle, Rev. Robert O. and Lela Jackson. Early in their marriage they had volunteered to go to Argentina as missionaries. Later, they traveled to Swaziland, Africa to help establish a medical mission in the 1940s and 1950s. They landed in a place called Manzini and served four years at a pioneer hospital and nurse’s training center. The next four years were spent out farther into the bush veldt at a place called Piggs Peak Station. Uncle Bob directed the efforts of the medical clinic and coordinated the activities of the mission. They literally poured their lives into the work.

One of the greatest rewards of my work with Project C.U.R.E. came in 2004, when Anna Marie and I were requested to travel to Swaziland. The Raleigh Fitkin Hospital in Manzini, Swaziland, 17 additional district clinics, and a nurse’s training college were in desperate need of help. The medical institution, as well as the Swaziland government, had requested that Project C.U.R.E. come and assess the health care facilities and see if we could be of assistance. The Swaziland government Health Ministry had promised to help financially underwrite the hospital. But the Swaziland government was having a tough time backing up their promises with money.

Over 100 years before, the King of Swaziland had given the missionary endeavor a huge piece of land that now was part of the city of Manzini, and had invited them to educate and minister to the people in Swaziland. Their presence in that part of southern Africa had been very successful and influential over the many years. Uncle Bob and Aunt Lela Jackson had been a part of that successful endeavor. The hospital administrators showed me records and evidence of the Jackson’s indefatigable efforts while they were there.

When we finished our assessment work in Manzini we were taken to the mountainous region of northwest Swaziland to view the outlying medical clinics in Piggs Peak, Endzingeni and 15 other clinics. Upon our arrival at Piggs Peak Station I stood just inside the entry gates of the compound and drank in a 360 degree view. “So, these were the views my relatives captured in their hearts day after day so many years ago.” They had worked in this very hospital and lived on this very compound during the critical days of growth and development of the care- giving ministry. As a young boy I had become vicariously acquainted with Swaziland. I had studied the pictures, listened to the wild stories, had touched and seen the artifacts from Africa that they had toted home with them. My soul now drank it all in as if I were a thirsty sponge with human legs. How soon we forget the exacting price others in the past have paid in their eternal journey to improve the world.

Upon my return to Colorado I called my 84 year-old “Uncle Bob,” who resided in an assisted living center near Roseburg, Oregon. My Aunt Lela had died a few years before. I told him that I had just returned from Swaziland. I let him reminisce and encouraged him to tell me once again about their experiences in Manzini, Endzingeni and Piggs Peak. “Do you remember seeing a long line of trees stretching from the church, past the clinic and toward the main house?” Uncle Bob asked me. “Oh yes,” I replied, “they are huge evergreen trees all in a straight row.”

“I planted all those with my own hands. I got them from a tree farmer who had come to plant a forest of trees on the rich and fertile hillsides of Piggs Peak.” “Uncle Bob,” I assured him, “you are to be commended for having planted all those trees in a straight line from the church building, past the clinic and toward the house. They stand today as a testimony that you left Swaziland a greener and better place than when you went there.”

“But,” I continued, “you and Aunt Lela are to be commended even more for the many years of your lives that you invested in Swaziland. Spiritual and physical seeds of help and hope were planted there by you that are far greater than the row of beautiful evergreen trees. Only heaven will reveal the waves of goodness that have lapped the shores of eternity since you and Aunt Lela affected that place by your committed lives and efforts. For Anna Marie and me, it was a great privilege to go to Swaziland and honor not only God but also you and Aunt Lela with additional medical goods for the hospital and clinics. Thanks for being a faithful worker and a good uncle.” Somewhere in their early journey they had discovered the eternal message also penned by Anne Frank, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson.

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com