Relationships matter more than anything else. Most of the biggest eternal impact any of us will ever make is not based on what we do, but through our relationships with those we encounter, just as with those I encountered in my early nonprofit work who later were essential to the creation of Many Hopes.
As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas Keown.
Thomas founded Many Hopes, a nonprofit organization which rescues children from injustice and equips them to be adults who can help others, after visiting East Africa for the first time in 2007 and thinking, “If my friends back home could see what I’ve just seen, they would want to help. So I’m going to show them.”
Born in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles,” Thomas was educated at Queens University, Belfast, worked for one of the two Nobel prize-winning signatories of the Belfast Peach Agreement, and is a former columnist. His career has spanned the media, politics and for-purpose missions in the UK, USA, Africa and Latin America. His belief that seemingly intractable problems can be solved by bringing the right influences to bear on them stems from his Christian faith. Today, he lives in New York City with his wife and three-legged dog, serves as an elder at Church of the City, and travels extensively speaking on issues of justice.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I grew up in Northern Ireland during the 30+ year conflict that we called “The Troubles.” Everyone knew someone who had been affected. Everyone knew someone who had lost someone close to them. I saw horrible things happen to innocent families and I felt that it was unfair and unjust. I desired change and dreamed of a day when the tragedies would stop. And I wanted to be part of the change. Thanks to my loving family and my access to education, I had the opportunity to work for some of the politicians who designed and signed the Belfast Peace agreement, including one who won a Nobel Peace Prize. This experience taught me that seemingly unsolvable problems can be solved if enough people bring their different perspectives to the table.
Later, as a journalist, I traveled to Kenya and met children living on the streets without homes or parents to care for them. Getting to know them, I realized they had suffered far more than I could comprehend. Despite this, they shared my desire to improve their communities. However, they lacked access to two crucial elements that made that possible for me: a loving family and an education.
I believed that if we could provide them with the same access to a supportive home and a decent education that I had access to, we would enable them to solve problems that even the most well-intentioned charity worker couldn’t. So, we created Many Hopes to provide that opportunity. I invited friends to bring three people to a first meeting and I promised to bring six. 26 people showed up and Many Hopes was born.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
After university and after working for the politicians, I moved to Boston to work for a small organization serving refugees and immigrants. While in Boston, many of my friends were either earning advanced degrees at prestigious colleges or were climbing career ladders. I, on the other hand, was not. I was working for a small non-profit with no clear path to anywhere career-wise. There were times that I felt I was getting left behind, wasting my time, or not progressing. Years later, at that first meeting where Many Hopes was born, I realized that I wouldn’t know any of these people but for those years that felt a little dead-end at the time. These relationships made it possible for Many Hopes to become a reality. While I couldn’t have known that then, I see now that everything happened for this reason, and I look back on that experience as a valuable lesson in perspective and how you never know the later fruit of what you’re doing now.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I always love a good joke. For me, my funniest mistake that I made early on in my career was telling the wrong joke to the wrong person…at the wrong time. We had just had our first big annual gala for Many Hopes, and we received a very generous donation from a man I had never met. As a thank you, I invited him to lunch, and he accepted. We went to a fancy restaurant and instantly got along. He started telling jokes, which really eased my nerves, and I joined in with some of my favorites. I had just been reading the top three jokes from that year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the winner was, “my cousin drowned last month (PAUSE). At the funeral, instead of a wreath, we got him a life-preserver (PAUSE). It’s what he would have wanted.”
I got as far as, “my cousin drowned last month,” when the man leaned in and gently touched my forearm and said, “Oh Thomas, I am so sorry. So did mine.” From there, we just stared at each other for a bit; him from a place of sympathy, and me from a place of panic.
The lesson I carry forward from this experience is to be careful with humor and get to know someone sensitively because you never know what their story might be. Luckily, he became a great, long-time supporter of Many Hopes.
Can you describe how you or your organization is making a significant social impact?
At Many Hopes, we seek to rescue children from situations of poverty and injustice and equip them to become adults who can help others, if they choose to. We invest deeply in survivors so they can be part of the solution to the hardships they once endured. We make a unique promise as a charity seeking financial support from the public — and that is that we won’t solve the world’s greatest problems, but we will raise the survivors who can. We call this “survivor-driven change.”
There were a couple of key moments of increased impact for us through the years. The first was expanding from one country to six. For the first 10 years of Many Hopes, we worked through one partnership in Kenya. While always looking for extraordinary survivors to partner with in the future, and after a long planning process, we made that step up in 2019/20.
The second was in 2021 when I engaged with a professional coach. Before our expansion, we had only two USA-based staff members and a budget of $1 million USD. As we expanded from one country to six, I realized that our capacity to effect real change would level off if my abilities to lead us didn’t grow as well. I needed help to become the leader I wanted to be, and Many Hopes would need to me to be. I met my coach through the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and through our work together, I learned a huge amount about how to manage and motivate a bigger team, delegate work, prioritize my time, and ultimately, facilitate the expansion of our operations.
This upskilling has resulted in a budget increase over $4 million USD, a rise in U.S. partners from one to six, and an evolution of our staff from two people to six. Coaching has helped increase our impact to over 1,400 children rescued from childhoods of injustice.
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
Brendah lost her mother to HIV when she was only six years old. She never knew her father. She was alone on the streets in Kenya when a woman claiming to be her aunt came along and told her she would take her in, care for her, and send her to school. Unfortunately, the woman was lying and instead, abused her and put her in indentured servitude in her home. Six years later, Brendah took a courageous leap and ran away, and eventually came to live in one of the first homes we funded. Our first Kenya partner, MKCT, found and prosecuted the “aunt.” In court, Brendah said words nobody will forget: “I hope I can become a lawyer so I can fight for the rights of other children, because someone stepped in and fought for my rights.”
In 2017, Brendah graduated with her law degree and in 2022, she passed the bar and immediately began defending the rights of other children. She is living proof of survivor-driven change.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
The most helpful actions anyone can take to help us help others are:
- Share our film: “The Rising: A Story of Survivor-Driven Change”
- Support us financially with a regular monthly or annual donation of any size
- Include survivors in conversations and decisions about solutions. One lesson that coaching taught me is the value of a coaching culture — which is when all members of an organization or group have access to coaching or leverage a coach approach in their work. This may include asking questions, making changes to adapt to the needs of those involved, and actively listening. A coaching culture fosters the environment needed for these survivors to feel able and empowered to share their experiences and guide decision making to ensure others do not suffer the same way they once did.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Leadership is guiding others to a place that they would not go without you. This might mean a physical place, a level of performance, or a piece of work. It is about encouraging and equipping people to be the best that they can be.
The coaching experience I mentioned earlier is the best example of my essential, and not always easy, move from leadership to management as we grew. Coaching helped me shift from just doing, to equipping others to do so, as together we could do more. Folks on our team now are doing things they never have before.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why.
- Relationships matter more than anything else. Most of the biggest eternal impact any of us will ever make is not based on what we do, but through our relationships with those we encounter, just as with those I encountered in my early nonprofit work who later were essential to the creation of Many Hopes.
- Make no small plans. Instead, share a big vision. This is much more motivating and compels others far more than any “manageable” goal ever would.
- Don’t try to tell everyone everything all the time. Everyone is busy and under their own pressure. Naturally, they won’t care about your priorities as much as you do, so be clear and succinct in your communication.
- Read every day. There is so much to learn from past generations, that you are choosing thought poverty or arrogance if you don’t immerse yourself in the knowledge that’s available to you.
- Learn to say no to good ideas, so you can focus 100% on the right goal and avoid mission creep.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I imagine a movement of sacrificial generosity, defined as giving to others in a way that requires personal sacrifice — a level of giving that puts us out of our own comfort to make someone else’s life better. In 2024, we know how to solve most problems causing the most pain. We know how to get people out of slavery; we know how to provide education; we know how to produce food and treat most diseases and provide clean water. And we know how to make all this a reality for hundreds of millions of people. The resources exist, so all we lack is the will to do it. I believe that generosity benefits the giver as much as it does the recipient. And that sacrificial generosity benefits the giver exponentially. So I’d love to start a movement that allows everyone to experience that feeling of making a genuine sacrifice to better the life of someone else.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“If we all give a little, nobody has to give it all.”
Many Hopes was created and grew because of many people coming together, each giving a little. As a result, there are girls and boys in high school and college today who would have otherwise likely lost their lives.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I’d have breakfast with Bono so we can talk about the ways we agree and disagree on the effectiveness of poverty alleviation efforts and why.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Readers can follow our work on www.manyhopes.org or on Instagram at @many_hopes. I encourage everyone to check out our film at www.manyhopes.org/therising. To learn more about professional coaching, visit https://coachingfederation.org/.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Heroes: Why & How Thomas Keown of Many Hopes Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.