Sometimes, a life-changing adventure doesn’t begin with careful planning, but with the simple flip of a coin — literally. At least, that’s how it went for intrepid traveler Barry Hoffner. And while Hoffner has immersed himself in many far flung places, the one that truly stole his heart was Timbuktu, located in the in the West African country of Mali.

It’s here that Hoffner got the inspiration for his nonprofit, Caravan to Class, which works to bring education and literacy to the villages around Timbuktu and the Southern Sahara by engaging diverse communities of supporters.

I caught up with Hoffner to learn more about his inspiring travel story.

1. What inspired you to want to travel, and what made you choose Timbuktu?

When I was graduating high school in 1978, my best friend and I flipped a coin to see if we would spend our savings from work on traveling/backpacking through Europe (his choice) or surfing in Hawaii (my choice). He won the coin flip and that changed my life. Since then I have lived/worked in nine different countries and have traveled to over 100 different countries.

In college I read a book about the Sahara Desert and was fascinated by the idea and mystery of Timbuktu. Visiting Timbuktu became a high priority on my bucket list and I was able to realize my dream to travel there in 2010.

2. You had encounters in Timbuktu that had a huge impact on you. What was that? How did you turn that experience into a positive one?

I traveled to Timbuktu in 2010 purely for the sense of adventure; however, while there for the famous music festival, the Festival Au Desert (which was last held in 2011 due to the insecurity in the region), I visited a village and saw that they had no school. Meeting with the head of the village and his wife in their tent, I was impressed with how sincere they were about the need to educate their children and how engaging and open they were, particularly the deference the chief showed to his wife.

It was at that moment that I told myself that I would raise the money to build that village, Tedeini, a school to celebrate my 50th birthday. That was the birth of Caravan to Class.

We have had some challenging times doing our work in Timbuktu. Only days after I visited Timbuktu to see our second school built in 2012, the entire region was taken over by a group linked to Al Qaida and our schools were shut down. Thanks to the French military the area was liberated in early 2013 and we were able to resume our work shortly thereafter.

3. For those looking to make a positive impact on the places they visit, what advice would you give?

In much of the developing world, particularly in Africa, it is the villages where a traveler will really see the soul of a country. Africa is a continent of villages, not cities. I would advise travelers to make a concerted effort to try and visit a village or two. Bring practical things like pencils, paper, old backpacks and find a way to visit a local school and hand them out directly to the students. In many cases, mid to larger size NGO can arrange visits to schools and hospitals. Find a place that inspires you, a cause that is important to you. Do your research to find the organization that best addresses the challenges/injustices faced by that place and get involved, through becoming a donor and/or volunteer.

4. For those looking to volunteer or work abroad to help the local population, what tips would you give for choosing a responsible placement where they can make the greatest impact?

There are many great non-profits that can arrange volunteering and working abroad on their programs. Unfortunately, smaller organizations like Caravan to Class simply do not have the infrastructure, particularly given the security situation, to provide these opportunities. Do your homework, find a non-profit that resonates with you, ask the hard questions and take a chance and go. You will not regret it.

5. For those looking to start their own nonprofit/charitable organization, what advice would you give?

First, find a place, cause and culture that truly inspires you. Think through critically whether you can create an organization that can begin to solve some of their problems. If you truly believe that you can, I would then offer the following advice:

• Get friends or colleagues to be inspired by the same place, cause and work together as a group.
• Find a local NGO whom you can trust. Do your due diligence. Start small to ensure that the planned work is happening on time and within budget.

These days, it is not difficult to start a 501c3 in the US. Focus on three important areas equally:

• Programming (the programs you will offer and the impact they will have)
• Fundraising (there are many different ways to raise funds, small online campaigns, writing grants, focus on a core group of major donors)
• Administration (do what you do in a well organized way)
  

  6. What have been some of the most important lessons you’ve learned, both from traveling and starting Caravan to Class?

  The biggest thing I have learned is the need to have more depth than breadth. It can be challenging running an organization whose work is so far away in an area with security challenges. It has helped that Caravan to Class’ focus is in one specific area (villages around Timbuktu) and on one specific cause (literacy).

  Small organizations can be torn in so many different directions. Staying very focused has contributed greatly to our success. If you are true to your core, good things will happen.

  In 2014, Caravan to Class got on the radar of the Good People Fund, an amazing granting organization, that believes that small actions can have huge impacts which not only became a grantor to our work in Timbuktu but became a true partner to provide strategic and specific advice which, for small non-profits, is regularly needed and always welcomed.

  If you are truly committed and put the effort into your work, and do it intelligently, good things will happen!

  7. What have been the biggest challenges of visiting communities in need, and how have you overcome them?

  Caravan to Class is a bit of a special case. While Timbuktu has always been difficult to reach, a long/hard journey from Mali’s capital Bamako, since 2012, the region has been very insecure. Today, Timbuktu is run by the UN Peacekeepers and the French military. When I travel there, I do so on a UN Humanitarian flight and have a UN Peacekeeping escort to visit the schools Caravan to Class has built. Still, Caravan to Class is committed to our cause of bringing literacy to there villages despite these challenges. We simply cannot let the forces of extremism prevent us from doing our work, as to do so would be a defeat for creating a more tolerant and just world.

  8. What does Caravan to Class do exactly, and how can people and travelers help grow literacy rates around the world?

  Caravan to Class builds schools in carefully selected villages around the fabled city of Timbuktu. We support these schools’ operations, paying teachers’ salaries and providing school supplies and food for a period of three years. Timbuktu, once the Islamic world’s third most important center of learning, today is one of the world’s most illiterate places. We seek to bring back this important legacy of scholarship, with French language education, one villages at a time. We are currently building a school in the village of Kakondji.

  While for Caravan to Class, our long-term goal for the area is universal literacy, our immediate goal, when we built a school, is “to get kids to go to school.” When we build a school, the children in that village are the first generation in hundreds of years to attend formal schooling. We measure ourselves by both the ratio of girls/boys attending the school and the attendance rate with our goals being 50%/50% and 70% respectively.

  About Barry Hoffner

  Barry has lived and worked in many locales around the world. After completing his B.A. in Economics at the University of California, Irvine and his MBA in Finance at Columbia University, Barry began his career with JP Morgan and worked in global postings such as New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Zurich, Singapore, Tokyo, and Moscow. His community involvement is varied and includes service as the President of the board at Slide Ranch, Founder and Executive Director of Caravan to Class (started in 2010 and president of the Pine Mountain –Cloverdale Peak Grape Growers Association. Barry is married to Jackie Hoffner and they are parents to two children Benjamin, age 18, and Daniel, age 16. In his spare time, he enjoys olive and wine-grape growing at his ranch, his children, travel, bike riding and the outdoors.

  Jessie Festa

  Jessica Festa is the editor of Jessie on a Journey as well as Epicure & Culture. She enjoys getting lost in new cities and having experiences you don’t read about in guidebooks. Some of her favorite travel experiences have been teaching English in Thailand, trekking her way through South America, backpacking Europe solo, road tripping through Australia, agritouring through Tuscany, and living with a family in Ghana.

http://jessieonajourney.com/timbuktu/

Grantee Ruth Moore is making an impact for survivors of sexual assault in the military. Her story was the focus of an article in All You magazine’s November issue.

A psychology major with background as a personal trainer, athletic instructor and support counselor for disabled adults,Jared Ciner channeled these passions into the Spirit Club Foundation with an eye toward creating and opening up

health and fitness opportunities for people with disabilities. Founded in April 2013, the Spirit Club offers group and individual exercise and socially inclusive programming that teach its participants to adopt healthy and active lifestyles.

Ciner was recently introduced to the Good People Fund (GPF) and received an opening grant of $5,000 to support his efforts. GPF is an organization rooted in the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and offers financial support and mentorship to small, effective initiatives in Israel and the US.

Ciner grew up in Denver where he attended Jewish day school,was actively involved with the Denver JCC and spent a year studying and volunteering in Israel. He credits his parents’ deep connection to Judaism and their encouragement of Jewish practice and values as having had a huge impact on his life today. His father, Denverite Sheldon Ciner,DDS, is a mohel.

The summer after college, Jared Ciner spent one month in Ethiopia volunteering at a school for children from severely impoverished backgrounds. While there, he organized sports and exercise activities for them. The experience inspired Ciner to pursue a profession that would include fitness for underserved populations. After receiving a BA in psychology from the University of Maryland and certification as a personal trainer, he began working as a support counselor for people with developmental disabilities.

Within one year created the Spirit Club. He now lives in Bethesda, Md. “After speaking to Jared we knew that his unique focus on this type of service for people with disabilities was something we wanted to be part of,” says Naomi Eisenberger, founder and executive director of GPF. Eisenberger had just returned from a visit with Ciner and Spirit Club members. “We support Jared and Spirit Club’s successful efforts to bring access to fitness and overall well being to this often overlooked community.”

Spirit Club members attend hour-long classes each week instructed by at least two certified personal trainers. The classes open with interactive themed exercises that give each member a chance to introduce himself or herself. The activities incorporate different types of fitness equipment, such as medicine balls, resistance bands, stability balls and agility ladders. All members are provided with portfolios to track their progress throughout the week. The classes conclude with a review of home health assignments, healthy snacks and time to socialize and consult with the personal trainers. Spirit Club’s co-founder, Sam Smith, a proud man with autism, is also a certified strength and conditioning specialist. Smith’s goal is to motivate others with his passion and enthusiasm for health and fitness.

Ciner says,“We are excited to now be part of the Good People Fund’s circle of grantees. “The demand for our services continues to increase and this assistance will enable us to offer fitness and health programming to people with disabilities throughout Maryland.”

Information: news@goodpeoplefund.org, www.spirit-club.org

A dozen drawings lined the wall next to Max Levitt’s lofted bed in his Syracuse fraternity house.

They came from 12 kids at a small school near the Singita Game Reserve in eastern South Africa that his family visited on vacation. Levitt, a Rockville native, said he had delivered two duffel bags of sporting equipment to the children, whose lone activity before then was chasing one another around the hot blacktop barefoot.

It became the first of many donations for Levitt, who five years later runs a nonprofit that distributes sporting equipment to underprivileged kids in the Washington and Baltimore areas. Levitt believes his organization, Leveling the Playing Field Inc., is the largest multisport equipment donation business in the country.

While the 2010 vacation wasn’t designed as a community service trip, Levitt knew the surrounding villages could use the help. So he reached out to about six high school friends the summer before his senior year at Syracuse to gather as much sporting equipment as he could take on the flight.

“The impact it had on that school and those teachers and those kids was insane,” Levitt said. “Just like how excited they were and how shocked they were to get this stuff. It was so simple to have done for me.”

He had considered working as a sports agent or in public relations, but the expressions on the kids’ faces in the small African village made him reconsider.

“That’s when I first kind of started thinking … ‘maybe this [is] the road I want to go to in sports,'” Levitt said. “I can have security. I can be my own boss. I can do good things for the community. A lot of people focus on the negative in sports, but I can shift the focus to the positive.”

Levitt has watched his idea blossom — the nonprofit has distributed more than $900,000 of equipment to programs in the area since November 2012.

As Levitt sat at his desk as a sales associate at LivingSocial in late May 2013, his cellphone started to ring. He sneaked away to the stairwell, which had become his secondary office, to answer a call that gave him the push he needed to go all in.

On the other end was D.C. United, which had found Levitt online and wanted to do a collection drive with him at a game. At the time, Levitt had been working in sales for about two years, operating Leveling the Playing Field on the side.

“I was like, ‘Wow, I’m not even doing this full time, and it’s grown to the point where a professional soccer team has found me organically and wants to do a collection,'” Levitt said. “It was at that moment when I decided I was doing this full time. I could see that this was going to work.”

He put in his two weeks’ notice at LivingSocial shortly after that phone conversation.

It was a welcome reprieve for Levitt, who had been racing home to his parents’ basement — from which he operated the one-man company — from Chinatown at 5:30 p.m. each day, only to stay up until midnight making spreadsheets, sending emails and calling universities that might become donors and organizations looking for equipment.

“No one was listening to me,” Levitt said. “I hadn’t made any donations. I didn’t have a warehouse. I didn’t have a very good website. There wasn’t a lot to Leveling the Playing Field at that point. It was really still an idea. There was no proof of concept.”

So he invested $5,000 from his savings, using some of the money to buy a dozen plastic bins from Target to set up collections. He designed a website, too. And while he called it “one of the worst websites I’ve ever seen,” it was functional.

He turned his focus from colleges to the local area, calling churches, synagogues, community centers, swimming pools and schools. The bins he set up in the community began to fill up — cluttering his parents’ basement.

“We looked like a Goodwill agency,” said Kay Klass, Levitt’s mother. “We nagged him hard, but he kind of humored us through it. I was very happy when he was out on his own. Not just for myself and being able to see the floor again, but really just that he had a little more organization.”

To this day, people still stop by their driveway — even though Levitt has moved out — to drop off equipment they want to donate. About a year ago, Under Armour showed up at his parents’ house, and Klass answered the door.

They said they had some unsold equipment they were supposed to drop off. She told them Levitt had a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in Silver Spring now, but they could put it in the garage for him to come pick up. The worker then turned and pointed to the semi-truck outside. It wouldn’t fit, they said.

‘Can’t imagine anything better’

With the back of a U-Haul filled to the brim with sports equipment June 9, Levitt drove to Baltimore. About a year earlier, he had made his first big donations in the city, dropping off about $50,000 worth of baseball equipment to James Mosher and Hamilton, two youth baseball leagues.

Levitt said Baltimore was an “obvious expansion.” He said more kids are in need of sporting equipment here, where 86 percent of city students received free or reduced lunch in 2014, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center.

Levitt, who hopes to eventually franchise his business model to reach more cities, estimated he travels to Baltimore once a week, sometimes for meetings with potential clients and other days for drop-offs. And because renting a U-Haul for the 45-minute drive gets expensive — he said it averages about $300 a trip with gas — he tries to plan at least four drop-offs per visit.

The first stop on his June 9 trip was Randallstown High School, where athletic director Michael Gelman said he has about $6 to spend per athlete. With football helmets and pads costing more than $100, it isn’t feasible to provide equipment for students on all the school’s teams.