Adam Carter on Living a Happier and More Purpose-Driven Life

In Chapter 1 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "When Are You at Your Best?"  Carter finds his personal bests when he is mindful of living in the moment.  He finds people, places and purpose to be the principles that motivate him and drive him toward a happier life. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: When are you at your best?

Adam Carter: I would say I’m at my best when I’m mindful of who I am and what I want to do and who I want to be, so I’m very conscious about—for example, living in the moment. I mean, I see all kinds of self-help books, and I see a lot of people reading self-help books, and the say, “Oh, yeah, got to live for the moment. That’s right,” and then they put the book down and they start yelling at the guy in front of them in traffic, and they start stressing out, over, you know, the most minute details, so, I’m really—I feel like as long as I can really be mindful of that, and be mindful of some of the principles that drive me, that I will be happy and successful in whatever I’m doing. So much of what I do has to do with everything that I’m thankful for and realizing just how much I have—I’ve had in my life, and so as long as I keep that in mind, it helps me kind of focus on the other goals that follow from that which would be, in this case, all the philanthropy work that I’m doing to help those that aren’t quite as fortunate, so as long as I don’t lose sight of that, and I’m living in the moment and I’m mindful, then I find that the rest of my life is a lot more rewarding and a lot more at peace, and happy.

Erik Michielsen: What are the principles that drive you?

Adam Carter:  Years ago, I realized there was three things that I needed to keep myself happy and to keep a rewarding life and they were people, places and purpose. So, first of all; surrounding myself with good people, with people that I trust, people that I like, people that have something to offer, people that share some of my vision, or even just share in my pension for life. Second, would be places. I discovered years ago that in my travels there were certain places that I really felt comfortable and that I really felt that I mixed well with, places that I could maybe call home or that I would enjoy living in or staying in, whatever. And third would be purpose. And this is—even if you’re in a good place and with good people, if you don’t have a good purpose in your life, if you’re not doing something rewarding, it’s gonna feel empty. So I found that with those three, it’s hard to take one out and really maintain that wholeness of life.

Adam Carter on How to Be More Health Conscious in Your Late 30s

In Chapter 2 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Personal Priorities Changing as You Get Older?"  At 38 years old, Carter talks about the increasing priority he has set on healthy living as he has advanced into his late 30s.  He discusses how exercise, diet, and meditation collectively help him achieve a healthier lifestyle. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your personal priorities changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: That’s an interesting question because I’m 38 years old, and it’s hard for me sometimes to believe I’m 38 years old. Only when someone asks me how old I am, and I say, “38,” do I realize, wow, I’m actually 38 years old. So in the last—I think everybody in their 30s hits a point where they realize that they have to be more conscious of their health, and they have to start to think more about their future, so that’s—I think I share some of those. I’m very health conscious, and this is something that has allowed me I think to maintain a lot of the vitality that I have. I’m a very steadfast practitioner of yoga and some meditation, so that’s definitely helped me, and as I’ve grown I’ve also become a lot more conscious of what I’m eating and what I’m putting into my body, so that’s helped me deal with the, how would you say, the reality of our age which is the one thing that we can’t slow down. So I think that at the core, I’m still driven by the same ideals, and it’s just something that being a little more conscious of the body of the shell of, you know, the body is the temple to keep us going and keep us on the path that we have decided.

Adam Carter on Adding Reflection Into Daily Routines

In Chapter 3 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Role as Reflection Played in Shaping Your Personal Growth?"  Carter details the importance of starting each day with a personalized yoga routine and meditation practice and how he has developed his daily routine over time.  This helps prepare him for the day and gives him a daily opportunity to reflect and be mindful of his environment, his decisions and his plans. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What role has reflection played in shaping your personal growth?

Adam Carter: I think we all have our own form of spirituality, and for me personally, I’m a very regular practitioner of yoga and meditation, so, for me, about five days a week, you know, I start my day with a yoga routine that I’ve developed over the course of the last decade, that continues to evolve, and, so, for me, being able to start each day, ground myself, and my practice ends with meditation that really helps me focus on the day, and helps me focus on and who I am, and it really helps me. I think sometimes, you know, we’ll wake up, people wake up, they have that cup of coffee and it’s just like, the day just like hits them head on, like, full on. It’s really been valuable for me to be able to kind of ease into my day and to be mindful, and doing meditation really helps me kind of be mindful throughout the day. Whenever I can I try to just kind of take a deep breath, take a step back and just kind of, center myself because things can get stressful when you let them pile up and your mind’s going a mile a minute. So for me to be able to ground myself every day has been especially important because I’m often living in different places, and I don’t have the routine that a lot of people have, so I might be waking up in a completely different bed. I might be—find myself in a completely different—it could be a city, it could be a shanty town, it could be on a farm, you know, who knows where I am, but having that—being able to ground myself in that sense, or with that sense of reflection has really allowed me to maintain some consistency in my life.

Adam Carter on Searching for Meaning by Traveling Abroad

In Chapter 4 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "Where is Your Comfort Zone and What Do You Do to Break Free of Living in It?"  After graduating college, Carter decides not to pursue traditional career paths and instead looks for meaning traveling abroad.  He starts his adventure by buying a one-way ticket to China.  Over time, he works summers selling beer at baseball games to finance international travel.  Ultimately, Carter decides to break out of this routine, walk away from the beer vendor life, and relocate to Brazil. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: Where is your comfort zone, and what do you do to break free of living in it?

Adam Carter: I broke out of my comfort zone when I graduated from college because I decided that instead of following the kind of pre-described path, of, you know, starting to interview and starting to work, and working towards a certain career goal and then retiring, whatever, that I just completely broke away from that, and that’s when I started to travel. So I think buying a one-way ticket to China is a great way for anybody out there to break out of their comfort zone. 

I’ve always respected those that have been able to do that on a professional level or on a personal level, and I’ve often had to reinvent myself or do that myself and then constantly thinking, okay, what can I do to challenge myself? What can I do to present a whole new set of stimuli or opportunities? And so as I continued to travel, I realized that I wanted to find a way to live abroad and continued to seek out a new comfort zone, but, at the same time, I had this job. I was a beer vendor in Chicago with the baseball stadiums, which was fantastic. I was able to go home every summer, make money. It was easy. You know, I’d go home, I could live with my mother, I could save my money, and then I could go travel and do my philanthropy work and everything, which was a great lifestyle and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but it got to the point, where I realized, “Okay, I’ve been doing this for 17 years now,” and I could see the guys around me, some of which have been doing it for 30 years, and they’re in their 50s, or in their 60s, and they got the bad knees and bad back and they’re kind of humbling around there, and I realized, I don’t want to do that. I want to do more in my life than be a beer vendor. 

So I had to really step out of my comfort zone and walk away from this job. And you know, my cohorts assured me, they’re like, “all right, dude, you’ll be back next year. We’ll see you next year.” I said, “Well, never say never, but I feel like I’m making this move, I got to do it.” I knew there was only one way to do it, and that is, you know, walk away and just cold turkey. I mean, there are challenges inherent in that, as I was saying, it’s all of a sudden, you have to provide income and you have to realize, okay, I’m an adult and I have to provide for my future, cool, but I felt like I never would have taken the next step if I had this comfort zone to come back to. I think it’s really important to—not to be afraid of what’s out there and to embrace uncertainty, and to me, I think one of the lessons that I have learned personally and that I try to pass to people that I meet is to embrace uncertainty, because uncertainty is the one certainty in our life, and yet, it’s the one thing that often brings people down. And the more that I’ve—every challenge that comes my way, I try to embrace it and say, “well, it’s all in how I’m gonna deal with this and how I react to this, because we all know that if this uncertainty doesn’t happen, a month down the road, something else is gonna come up,” so the more I can kind of, you know, take everything with a smile and be like, here we go again. Let’s see what we got to do here. It’s really helped me just find my place in the world. So I’d say that being ready for the unexpected and having confidence in yourself and having confidence in the fact that, okay, things are gonna work out in the end. You know, we often stress about these little things, then we look back ten years later, and I’m like, “I can’t believe I got so stressed out like that because, look, it doesn’t even matter,” so I try to keep that mindset, which has really enriched me I think as a person.

Adam Carter on Why to Relocate to Brazil and Establish Residency

In Chapter 5 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "Why Did You Move to Brazil and How Has the Experience Informed Your Future Plans?"  After traveling to over 80 countries, Carter finds a calling in the personable and positivity of the Brazilian people and culture.  Feeling a special connection, Carter decides to visit for a while, learn Portuguese and acclimate to the culture while doing micro-philanthropy work in the favelas.  Ultimately, he commits to the move and establishes residency in Brazil. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: Why did you move to Brazil, and how has the experience informed your future plans?

Adam Carter: Well, I moved to Brazil because it was the single place in the world that called me more than any other.

Erik Michielsen: How so?

Adam Carter: Brazilians are one of the most gregarious and friendly and open-minded people that I’ve come across in the world, and they’re simply a joy to be around. I think anybody that’s been to Brazil will tell you that the Brazilians have a zest for life that is hard to find anywhere else, and it’s a kind of place where, even after the first time I was there, I felt a special connection. I’m not one for hyperbole, so I didn’t walk out there saying, “this is the best place in the world, “ but I said to myself,  “all right, Adam, you need to come back here, spend a little time, learn Portuguese, get into the culture a bit.” I took it slow. I went back for about three, four months, learned Portuguese immediately, I studied on my own, and I’d already spoken Spanish, so that was easy, and the more I learned about Brazil, the more I got into the culture, the more I felt comfortable, and it got to the point where I started doing my philanthropy work down there, so I had that whole ‘nother connection there, and I started to make friends that I just—every time that I was there, I felt more comfortable, and it’s the kind of place where I’m always happy. I feel happy when I’m there. There’s something about, between the people and the natural beauty and the culture, and it’s just such a lively place. It just makes you feel alive, so I got to the point where instead of ferrying back and forth from Chicago down to Brazil, and then going back home for the summer, I decided to just pick up and move to the place where my heart was calling me, and I landed in Brazil.

Erik Michielsen: And how has that informed your future plans?

Adam Carter: So moving to Brazil has really dictated my future plans because I realize that I had to make a living there. It’s different going down for a few months and having a good time and doing this charity work which is volunteer, that’s a lot different from realizing, okay, I got to find a way to support myself. So for me the only way to do it is to really jump in headfirst. And so I got down there, started to assess my opportunities, realized that it’s very difficult for a lot of these companies to get a work visa for foreigners, so I realized that I needed to, if possible, get my own residency there. So I went through that process through investing in a business and this and that to obtain my permanent residency. Some friends and I have a start-up based here in the states, so at this point, I’ve been able to do my work remotely from Brazil which is wonderful because it just goes to show, this would not have been possible even ten years ago that I can live in one country and in effect, be doing my business in another. I mean, and over the years I’ve seen so many people living these lifestyles that I realized, well, hey, why sit in an office in the States if I don’t have to? When I can be down in Brazil where I can continue my philanthropy work, and I can really be where my heart is. So it’s an adjustment, you know, living in another culture and trying to find out what your place is professionally. So I’m trying to keep my options open to see exactly where the start-up, how it matures and how it progresses because I need to just be sure that if I am doing something different that I’m down in Brazil that I need to make sure that I’ve got a niche down there as well.

Adam Carter: How to Move to Brazil and Live on a Budget

In Chapter 6 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "Where Has Your Move to Brazil Been Most Challenging?"  Carter shares the positive economic growth happening in Brazil and the challenges of diminishing purchasing power of the American dollar.  As an ex-pat, Carter learns ways to live full time in Brazil, make a living, and continue doing his philanthropy work. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: Where has your move to Brazil been most challenging?

Adam Carter: It’s become challenging economically and that has a variety of factors. First and foremost, Brazil, as you know, has been booming in the last 10-15 years economically, and this is great for Brazilians, it’s great for the country. 20 million people have been pulled out of poverty in the last 10 years, which is fantastic. You know they are very resorts rich, and there’s a lot more—the consumer boom is in full force. So a lot of businesses are doing well, low unemployment. That’s wonderful for Brazilians. 

It’s not so great for Americans that have chosen to move down there. When I first started going down there back in 2001, the U.S. dollar was worth 4 Reais, Brazilian Reais, and when I was just there last year, it had fallen to about 1.25. So, I mean, I’ve lost a lot of purchasing power as an expat there, which is a challenge because I’ve been living in Rio, and Rio has turned into one of the most expensive cities in the world. So this idea of—before I used to spend my summers in Chicago and save my money and then go to a cheaper locale where I could live a good lifestyle, and suddenly that’s kind of been thrown into whack. Brazil has become—Rio and São Paulo, especially the big cities, have become extremely expensive in terms of real estate, in terms of rent, in terms of food, in terms of going out, in terms of transportation. The real estate in Ipanema where I was living in Rio went up like—real estate prices went up like 90% in the course of a year, year and a half, so you can feel it, and people there can feel it, too. So it’s been challenging to kind of catch up to that wave, but it just forces you to be a little more resourceful and be a little more smart about how you plan and spend your money.

Adam Carter on What Gets Easier and What Gets Harder

In Chapter 7 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What is Getting Easier and What is Getting Harder in Your Life?"  Carter finds it progressively easier learning to live in different locations and cultures.  After traveling to 80 different countries, he finds it progressively difficult to be financially secure after walking away from a seasonal job and moving to Brazil full time. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What is getting easier and what is getting harder in your life?

Adam Carter: Well, what is getting easier is learning how to be comfortable living in other places and in other cultures.  I have so much experience traveling the world now over the last 16 years of living all over the place that I found that it’s easier for me to immerse myself in a culture, find—carve out my little niche, make myself feel at home. You know, communication has made that so much easier now. It’s so much easier for me to stay in touch with my family and my friends. So it’s been easier for me to feel at home in so many parts of the world, and what’s become more difficult… Well, it’s become more difficult to keep this—to continue to finance this lifestyle. You know, all the charity work that I do is—all the travel I pay for, which is fine. I can still handle it, but I think when I had a summer—when I had my summer job in Chicago where it was easy for me to just go back for the summer and make good money and then travel, it was easier to keep this lifestyle. You know, I’ve had to adjust now because I decided to walk away from that job, and so now I have to obviously seek out other means of income in order to support my passion. So that’s been a bit of a challenge of kind of trying to figure out what my place is and in a professional light and not just in a humanitarian light.

Adam Carter on Deciding Not to Grow a Nonprofit

In Chapter 8 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Made You Decide Not to Expand the Scope of Your Micro-Philanthropy Efforts?"  As Carter gains experience, he finds it is not in his best interest to scale his non-profit in the funds it raises and the number of projects it completes.  Carter notes his struggle to do more good while staying true to his hands-on founding goals. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation, which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What made you decide not to expand the scope of your micro-philanthropy efforts?

Adam Carter: I think a lot of start-ups whether it’s a nonprofit or a business, they’re immediately thinking, okay, how big can I get? I think that’s kind of the instinct there. So when I started Cause & Affect, I was really excited to really create a model that could be ramped up in time. And so as I started the process, as I started to raise money, and then I started to distribute the funds to these projects around the world, I got to the point where I realized that there was a problem and that was that as I scaled up Cause & Affect, it would change the whole structure of what I had envisioned. You know, I created this so that I would be able to be out in the field personally overseeing all of these projects. I mean, Cause & Affect is based on the fact that I’m able to see exactly how every dollar is spent, and that I’m not just simply sending it over to organizations that look like they have a good website, or someone goes and visits and says, “Oh, it’s a good project. Okay, here’s a few thousand dollars.” That’s not how it works.

So what I realized is that for me to really scale this up, first of all it would require a lot more time. I mean, as it is I’m putting in a lot of my own time and money for traveling, and I’m content with that. That’s fine, but in order for me to do this really full time, you know, to that extent, I would have to get some income, and so then you just kind of work backwards. Well, what’s the minimum amount of income I would need to live my life and plan for a future, whatever? So, I mean, even if it was just, let’s say $50,000, from $50,000—If I’m gonna raise $50,000, that’s gonna go towards me, we have to be sure that’s only maybe 10% of what we’re raising. So then you’re looking at $500,000 that we’d have to bring in every year in order to justify a $50,000 salary for myself. And that’s obviously quite a challenge these days, and also once you—in order to bring in $500,000 a year, you might have to hire someone to help you with your marketing or your fundraising, and then you’ve got another salary to deal with, so that’s more money you need to bring in just to break even, and I felt like this was just setting up a lot of pressure for me personally, whereas what I’m really good at, I wasn’t born to be a CEO and to micro-manage four or five people working for me, and if I wanted to do that I probably would have set up a business or an NGO 15 years ago.

What I’m good at is the interpersonal relationships in the field and assessing each of these projects and finding the best way to help them, and finding out how to be the most effective with this small amount of money. Now, obviously, it would be wonderful to be able to distribute more money, and hopefully, down the road, we will find a way to do that, to ramp up these contributions in that there is still a way within this model to give a lot more money. I mean each of these projects that I’m assisting with, $1,000 or $2,000. I could easily add a zero to that if some other donors come on board that really share the vision, but I kind of realized that I needed to focus on the task at hand which was making sure that every dollar distributed goes directly to the people in need, instead of worrying about how big of a structure I could create and, instead of getting my ego in it of like, how big of an organization I could create.

Adam Carter: How to Find Micro-Philanthropy Project Work in India

In Chapter 9 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "What Did Doing Your Recent Micro-Philanthropy Project in India Teach You?"  Carter talks about his past experience traveling to India and how a recent trip collaborating with VANNI working with deaf children in Kolkata taught him the power of communication.  Carter travels to India to help the non-profit improve how it creates education materials for hearing-impaired children living in poverty. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did doing your recent micro-philanthropy project in India teach you?

Adam Carter: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in India over the years, and it’s a place that has always attracted me. It’s something about the combination of the millennia of history and culture. It’s always kind of been that real exotic place in the world, and even now after having been to, I don’t know, 80 plus countries, I’m still drawn back to India time and time again. This recent trip I was in Calcutta in the eastern part of India and I think the most—what it really taught me, I guess, as far as a lesson is, I would say, the importance of communication, and the reason I say that is because I was working with a project called VAANI which is an amazing project, that’s kind of an award-winning project, really, really dynamic director, and what they do is they work with deaf children in the slums of Calcutta.

So as you can imagine, not a pretty place, a very, very rough place to live, to grow up, and for a lot of these families, you know, they have a lot of children, and often one of the children has some kind of deformity, or whether they’re born with some condition. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources there to act upon that, and in the case of this project, what we’re working with are deaf children, and unfortunately, many of these families that have deaf children, first of all, a lot of them don’t even really realize that their kids are deaf. They haven’t really fully been diagnosed, so they kind of have this idea that, oh, well, he doesn’t really understand, he’s a little slow, this or that. And even if they know, that, okay, my kid can’t hear. They don’t know the resources that are out there, which is really a shame because these kids grow up, basically, kept at home, not going to school, and kind of ignored by their family, and these kids, their mind is perfectly functional. I mean, it’s horrific to imagine really being trapped inside your body where you can’t communicate with your family, and nobody knows what you’re saying, what you’re thinking.

So thankfully this project, first of all, they send social workers out into these neighborhoods to look for these children and to tell the families, “look, there’s an answer here. We’re gonna help your kid, and you’re gonna see that your kid is just as smart as all the others, and he can actually participate in a regular school setting.” So it was incredibly heartwarming to see these kids now that are getting one-on-one education, educational help from a trained practitioner, you know, that works with deaf children. They’re learning how to do sign language. They’re learning how to speak a bit. Some of them that don’t have complete deafness are getting the hearing aids that they need to be able to hear more and more. The mothers are brought in with the kids, so they’re both there, and they’re both learning sign language because it’s important for them to communicate. This is the bridge that’s gonna allow this kid to communicate with his parents and with his family.

Erik Michielsen: How did you get involved in that project?

Adam Carter: I knew I wanted to go back to India, so sometimes I focus on an issue. Sometimes I focus on a place. In this instance, it was kind of a combination of the two. I knew I wanted to go back to India, and I was speaking with my mentor. He had mentioned how he had come across some—a project helping some deaf people in Asia, and I thought, well, that’s a group that I don’t know much about, I haven’t worked with before, personally, but I think we can all understand it’s a pretty black and white issue. So I started to do some research before I went about to see if there were any organizations that were addressing this on a local or national level. There’s a project called VAANI, which is the first kind of nationally—it’s based in Calcutta, but they’re planning to expand it nationally. They now have projects in West Bengal which is the state of Calcutta and up in Assam which is further up in the northeast, and so I communicated with them. I did some research on the organization and found out that it has an amazing reputation. And, so, I met with them and I visited all of their projects, and then I sat down with the director and with a few other of the staff and we talked about what would be the most effective ways of improving the project, and what we came up with was—is wonderful because these kids are coming in so if you have a deaf child that’s coming in, let’s say, twice a week, with his mother for this training. They have different ways of teaching them. They have a lot of educational materials, and then a lot of it has to do with the teacher one-on-one. 

The only kind of gap in this process is the fact that when the kid goes home, until he comes back later in the week or the next week, he’s kind of at a standstill.  Sure he and the mother could practice what they’ve learned, but the problem is he has to leave the educational materials at the project because they need them for the next kid. So what we came up with was, well, why don’t we improve this process by producing more of these educational materials, producing kind of like, you know, sets of them like booklet sets, so that the kids can take them home with them, practice it over the course of the week with the rest of their family, the father who may be working, the brothers and sisters who are in the house. So we’re creating really nice, heavy laminated, very durable materials that will be able to really improve the interpersonal communication, which is so important.

Adam Carter on Helping Charitable Trusts Identify and Fund Projects

In Chapter 10 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are You Learning to Apply Your Passions in New Ways?"  Carter talks about how he finds value in a liaison role between charitable trusts and the social impact areas they seek to affect.  Carter gives local assistance to global non-profit organizations, helping them identify, design, and implement projects in areas such as Brazilian favelas and shanty towns. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: What did doing your recent micro-philanthropy project in India teach you?

Adam Carter: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in India over the years, and it’s a place that has always attracted me. It’s something about the combination of the millennia of history and culture. It’s always kind of been that real exotic place in the world, and even now after having been to, I don’t know, 80 plus countries, I’m still drawn back to India time and time again. This recent trip I was in Calcutta in the eastern part of India and I think the most—what it really taught me, I guess, as far as a lesson is, I would say, the importance of communication, and the reason I say that is because I was working with a project called VAANI which is an amazing project, that’s kind of an award-winning project, really, really dynamic director, and what they do is they work with deaf children in the slums of Calcutta.

So as you can imagine, not a pretty place, a very, very rough place to live, to grow up, and for a lot of these families, you know, they have a lot of children, and often one of the children has some kind of deformity, or whether they’re born with some condition. Unfortunately, they don’t have the resources there to act upon that, and in the case of this project, what we’re working with are deaf children, and unfortunately, many of these families that have deaf children, first of all, a lot of them don’t even really realize that their kids are deaf. They haven’t really fully been diagnosed, so they kind of have this idea that, oh, well, he doesn’t really understand, he’s a little slow, this or that. And even if they know, that, okay, my kid can’t hear. They don’t know the resources that are out there, which is really a shame because these kids grow up, basically, kept at home, not going to school, and kind of ignored by their family, and these kids, their mind is perfectly functional. I mean, it’s horrific to imagine really being trapped inside your body where you can’t communicate with your family, and nobody knows what you’re saying, what you’re thinking.

So thankfully this project, first of all, they send social workers out into these neighborhoods to look for these children and to tell the families, “look, there’s an answer here. We’re gonna help your kid, and you’re gonna see that your kid is just as smart as all the others, and he can actually participate in a regular school setting.” So it was incredibly heartwarming to see these kids now that are getting one-on-one education, educational help from a trained practitioner, you know, that works with deaf children. They’re learning how to do sign language. They’re learning how to speak a bit. Some of them that don’t have complete deafness are getting the hearing aids that they need to be able to hear more and more. The mothers are brought in with the kids, so they’re both there, and they’re both learning sign language because it’s important for them to communicate. This is the bridge that’s gonna allow this kid to communicate with his parents and with his family.

Erik Michielsen: How did you get involved in that project?

Adam Carter: I knew I wanted to go back to India, so sometimes I focus on an issue. Sometimes I focus on a place. In this instance, it was kind of a combination of the two. I knew I wanted to go back to India, and I was speaking with my mentor. He had mentioned how he had come across some—a project helping some deaf people in Asia, and I thought, well, that’s a group that I don’t know much about, I haven’t worked with before, personally, but I think we can all understand it’s a pretty black and white issue. So I started to do some research before I went about to see if there were any organizations that were addressing this on a local or national level. There’s a project called VAANI, which is the first kind of nationally—it’s based in Calcutta, but they’re planning to expand it nationally. They now have projects in West Bengal which is the state of Calcutta and up in Assam which is further up in the northeast, and so I communicated with them. I did some research on the organization and found out that it has an amazing reputation. And, so, I met with them and I visited all of their projects, and then I sat down with the director and with a few other of the staff and we talked about what would be the most effective ways of improving the project, and what we came up with was—is wonderful because these kids are coming in so if you have a deaf child that’s coming in, let’s say, twice a week, with his mother for this training. They have different ways of teaching them. They have a lot of educational materials, and then a lot of it has to do with the teacher one-on-one. 

The only kind of gap in this process is the fact that when the kid goes home, until he comes back later in the week or the next week, he’s kind of at a standstill.  Sure he and the mother could practice what they’ve learned, but the problem is he has to leave the educational materials at the project because they need them for the next kid.

So what we came up with was, well, why don’t we improve this process by producing more of these educational materials, producing kind of like, you know, sets of them like booklet sets, so that the kids can take them home with them, practice it over the course of the week with the rest of their family, the father who may be working, the brothers and sisters who are in the house. So we’re creating really nice, heavy laminated, very durable materials that will be able to really improve the interpersonal communication, which is so important.

Adam Carter on Finding Life Advice in Unexpected Places

In Chapter 11 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "At This Point in Your Life, Where are You Seeking Advice and Coaching?"  Carter finds good advice in a network of friends pursuing different field of work and study.  He finds the best advice often comes from the most unexpected places.  For example, in his micro-philanthropy work, Carter finds inspiration meeting and learning from local heroes in places such as the shanty towns of Rio. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: At this point in your life where are you seeking advice and coaching?

Adam Carter: Luckily, I have a network, a lot of friends that are involved in various fields, fields of study, fields of work, and I’ve found that sometimes some of the most insightful information comes from the most unlikely of places. So I always try to keep myself open to those friends that I—sometimes friends that I really respect that have climbed up in whatever field that they’re involved in, but, at the same time, I’ve found that sometimes it comes from the people on the street, the people that you would never assume would be those to be giving advice, and in my philanthropy work, I’ve become so inspired by some of these local heroes that I’ve been working with, or just some of the people that I have come into contact with through these projects. The 85-year-old woman in Rio, in the shantytowns in Rio, We can see her living conditions are horrible. They’re sub-humane, so “we’re going to fix the roof. We’re going to get you a new mattress. What else do you want?” She’s like, “no, that’s great.” And we’re like, “okay, how about a new fan, you know, to get—“ she’s like, “well, that one still works fine.” “Okay, well, how about—“ and just that humility. Someone finally shows up at her doorstep to help her and she has the humility to say, “No, that’s great. That’s all I really need.” I mean, that’s incredible. We’re used to hearing about people that just want to take, take, take. So, I mean, sometimes it’s—as I said, people you would never expect to learn something from. You’re not even seeking advice, and all of a sudden you get this life lesson thrown at you. So that’s been one really rewarding aspect of receiving advice.

Adam Carter on Building Mother-Son Bonds After Mom Retires

In Chapter 12 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Have You Grown Closer to Your Mother as She Has Moved into Retirement?"  An only child, Carter shares how the bond with his Mom has grown over time, mainly through traveling together internationally.  After his mother retires to Guatemala and begins volunteering, Carter and his Mom bond as peers and learn from each other working on micro-philanthropy projects together. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How have you grown closer to your mother as she’s moved into retirement?

Adam Carter: Well, my mother and I have always had a very close relationship. I, like yourself, am an only child, and so I always had a very strong bond with my mother. And our relationship has really evolved over the years which is something that really has warmed my heart because I think this started—once I started to travel after college, I think my mom realized that she needed to—in order to see her son, she needed to kind of get out there and start crossing continents, and so we’ve had—we’ve met up and traveled in Spain, in Nepal, in Italy, in Brazil, in India, in Central America, so that’s been a wonderful dimension, but beyond that, my mom got to the point where she was able to retire. 

And she realized that she wanted to lead a more fulfilling life. So she retired to Guatemala, and she’s currently living there, and she’s speaking Spanish, and she’s volunteering with a variety of organizations, and she’s really found her heart’s calling. And to me that’s been extremely rewarding because it shows that this relationship between mother and son is not—you know, I think when we’re little we have this idea that, okay, our mother is there to teach us, and that as we get older we will always be looking to our mother, you know, the mother guides, the mother teaches, and while that’s still the case, all of a sudden, I think we can see that we’re learning from each other, and that my mother is, you know, I’m helping guide my mother, and my mother’s learning things from me, so I think it’s a wonderful circle there where a parent is able to create something in a child where that child becomes an adult with a meaningful life that can then help teach and guide the parent. 

So that’s been wonderful, and what’s been extremely rewarding about this is being able to participate with her in some of these projects with Cause & Affect. Being based down in Guatemala, and working with these organizations on her own, my mother is a perfect scout, as you will. She’s on the ground, and so, for example, when I recently went down there in February, she had been traveling with one of these projects to some of the rural villages in Guatemala and she came across this family that just—it just broke her heart to see the living conditions that this family was living in. It was a father and his two children, and the mother had died five years earlier, which presented a real challenge because this is a part of Guatemala where most of the men go off to do seasonal work, agricultural work, in other parts of Guatemala. He wasn’t able to do that because he couldn’t leave his two little kids in the house alone, so they had a real financial problem, and their home, as a result, was really just a shack made of kind of wood and mud, and there was a lot of bugs and mosquitoes and rodents. It just was not a safe place. They were cooking in—they were cooking over a fire in the house, which was very bad with the smoke inhalation. It was just one tiny room, which was not a place for this family. 

So it was my mother and I, and we were able to find a local organization that helps build houses for families like this. And we were able to help finance it so that they could live in a new home, and three weeks later, there it was—a 2-bedroom house. You know, obviously, dispartan, you now, but real floors, windows, some security, safety, health, so that was wonderful for my mother and I to be in a position where we’re working together, because much of what I‘ve put into Cause & Affect, the reason that I got here is because she instilled that compassion in me, and it’s really just been a means of me directing that compassion that she instilled in me outwards. So to be able to do it together as a team has been very rewarding.

Adam Carter on Growing a Step-Sister Relationship

In Chapter 13 of 13 in his 2012 Capture Your Flag interview, micro-philanthropist Adam Carter answers "How Are Your Family Relationships Changing With Age?"  Carter talks about building a relationship with his step-sister and taking her on a micro-philanthropy project trip after she graduated high school.  By giving her an opportunity to raise money and do micro-philanthropy, Carter bonds with his little sister and opens her eyes to non-traditional education possibilities, which leads her to do the Global Citizen Year program. 

Adam Carter is a micro-philanthropist currently living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He is the founder of the Cause and Affect Foundation which raises small amounts of financing to provide direct-to-source project funding for individuals and communities in need across the globe.  To date, Carter has traveled to over 80 countries.  He earned an MA in International Development from George Washington University and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Transcript: 

Erik Michielsen: How are your family relationships changing as you get older?

Adam Carter: Well, in the march of time as we all get older; it’s really interesting to see how our relationships and our roles change with each other, whether it’s between son and mother, son and father or even son and sibling.

In the case of—My father was remarried and had two children so, technically my half-sister, which I affectionately call my sister. My sister is 20 years younger than myself. She was born when I was in college. So when I started traveling the world, she was 2-3 years old.

So as she got older, I can only imagine what ideas she had of her big brother—this guy that would come from faraway lands. Each year he’d come back, he’d look different, he’d have a different hairstyle, he’d have different facial hair, he’d have different clothes, whatever, and so over time, we formed a really wonderful bond.

And as she started to mature, she became more interested in these places that I was going and this lifestyle that I was leading, and I could really sense that interest. So I asked her if she would want to join me on one of these trips, and she said, “of course, how can we make it happen?” We were thinking about— in Illinois, you’re able to take your child out to home school them. So we had spoken with the principal. We had gotten permission to do that. It turns out that that was—would be a challenge because she would have to be learning certain classes while we were doing that, and taking my sister around Latin America and teaching her trigonometry and biology didn’t seem to be too cohesive.

So what we did is she was able to graduate early from high school, and so she graduated a semester early, and then she came and traveled with me for four months, and I really approached this as kind of a, almost kind of like a training session. I mean, I wanted it to be as fun and as enriching as possible, and so first thing that we did is she raised money in Chicago before she left. She made these bracelets that she sews and was able to sell those to friends and family and, you know, members of their congregation, whatever, and came up with $1,200, which is quite a nice sum of money, and she was then able visit projects with me on behalf of Cause & Affect, and not only be an observer, but be a participant. Since this was money that she had raised, I allowed her to have a role in—really just teach her the process from the ground up, which is, okay, here we are.

So we started in Guatemala, and we did some wonderful projects there. We repaired some cleft palates. Some of these babies that are born with cleft palates. Surgery, parents can’t afford it. They can’t afford it throughout the life of their kids, unfortunately, and so a lot of these kids grow up almost as a shame—an object of shame for the families, so we’re able to work with an organization that we partnered with before, and do some of these surgeries, which is incredible. It’s $200 each, so, I mean, simply with $600, she’s able to say, “Okay, look, we just completely changed the life of three of these babies.” I mean that’s the kind of thing that you can really feel that effect. And then I took her down to Panama. She had also had another friend that had amassed all these little teddy bears and things. It’s kind of her own pet project.

So we went down to a children’s hospital there in Panama City, and we were able to distribute these to all these kids, and, you know, that was a wonderful experience also to be able to, you know, see all these smiles. Even though it’s a small gesture for each of these kids it was—it brightened their day. And then from there we went down to Brazil and we spent a month in Rio, and she was volunteering with me at some of the organizations that I worked with, and it was incredible to see. I mean, you know, you grow up with somebody, and this is how you talk about the different relationships, you’re used to somebody like, okay, I changed your diapers and we’re playing hide and seek, and you’re getting older and we’re playing around, and here we are in our house—it’s our comfortable surroundings, right. And all of a sudden, here I am, I’m in the middle of Rocinha, this big favela, and we’re going up to visit this project, and we’re walking through these tight alleyways, or we’re on the back of a, you know, they have these moto-taxis to zoom around, and I kind of had a catharsis at one point, where I’m on the back of this guy’s motorcycle and I see my sister zooming up the hill on the back of this other guy’s motorcycle, and you’re just like, “wow, you know, we’ve come a long way.”

So it’s been wonderful to see her open her world and help be a part of that consciousness being born, and she’s actually now back in Brazil. She’s doing a really cool exchange program where she’s working with a social organization down there. It’s a program called Global Citizen Year, which is an incredible, kind of like a gap year program. So it’s been really fun to help, kind of propel her into this new adventure, and, you know, so many people have said, “Oh, man, she’s so lucky to have a brother that can take her to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, she is lucky. I wish I had that.” You know, 20 years ago, I definitely had to kind of jump in headfirst and learn the hard way, but, yeah, it’s been wonderful to see that relationship being able to evolve, in that sense.