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Product Description
Bill Shore has written a wise and inspiring book that shows us how to make the most of life and do something that counts.
Like the cathedral builders of an earlier time, the visionaries described in this memoir share a single desire: to create something that endures. The great cathedrals did not soar skyward because their builders discovered new materials or financial resources; rather, the builders had a unique understanding of the human spirit that enabled them to use those materials in a new way. So, too, have the extraordinary people Bill Shore has met in his travels as one of the nation's leading social entrepreneurs, a new movement of citizens who are tapping the vast resources of the private sector to improve public life. Among them are:
-Gary Mulhair, who has created unprecedented jobs and wealth at the largest self-supporting human-service organization of its kind, Pioneer Human Services of Seattle
-Denver chef Noel Cunningham, who has committed his life to ending hunger and has galvanized a community to take action
-Nancy Carstedt of the Chicago Children's Choir, which provides thousands of children with an introduction to music
-Alan Khazei of City Year, which has become the model for President Clinton's vision of national service
-Geoffrey Canada, who has created a safe haven for more than four thousand inner-city children in New York City, from Harlem to Hell's Kitchen
These leaders, and many others described in these pages, have built important new cathedrals within their communities, and by doing so they have transformed lives, including their own.
Amazon.com Review
The Cathedral Within uses the metaphor of architecture to look at the way individuals allocate their resources to improve public life. Just as the enduring magnificence of a cathedral is not erected overnight, so, too, the transformation of a society takes many, many years to complete. And just as the construction of a cathedral is less a reflection of its builders' interest in masonry than a testament to the soaring reach of the human spirit, philanthropy is not so much a response to need as to a basic human requirement to give something meaningful back to society.
Bill Shore is the founder of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit devoted to raising funds for antihunger and antipoverty organizations worldwide, and his book showcases the stories of some of the social entrepreneurs he has come across in the course of his work. Among his chosen visionaries are Alan Khazei, the cofounder of City Year, the community-service program upon which Bill Clinton drew for his own model of a national service, and Geoffrey Canada, the president and CEO of the Rheedlen Centers, designed to provide a safe haven for inner-city children. These leaders and many others, Shore argues, represent a kind of symbiosis between the need to improve oneself personally and the drive to transform the community. The Cathedral Within also contains an excellent resource directory of community organizations where readers can begin their own process of giving back. --Patrizia DiLucchio
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