Rhode Island philanthropist hungry to make a differenceHe has lived in the same seven-room ranch in Cranston, Rhode Island for 35 years. His car is 12 years old. His name isn’t Rockefeller or Trump, yet Alan Shawn Feinstein is a multi-millionaire without all the trappings. His beneficiaries are the citizens of Rhode Island and hungry people everywhere.
The impetus for helping others and eliminating hunger came during the 1970s.
“One day a social worker invited me to see a bread line in Providence,” he says.
“The weather was dismal, yet people were standing in the drenching rain in a line that stretched around the block. All those people just waiting for a day old loaf of bread...”
That day Feinstein entered the battle to end hunger with his heart and his checkbook.
Feinstein’s grass-roots effort - he has one part-time assistant—has helped raise awareness and $190 million during the last five years alone for more than 3,000 anti-hunger agencies, churches and synagogues nationwide that have used his fundraising challenge to spur action by their own donors. His effort has also altered the culture of Rhode Island school students - from kindergarten to graduate school - for whom helping others has become a way of life.
Not everyone in this materialistic world understands how a man who could easily afford a mansion or two would choose to live so modestly.
“This is more satisfying to me,” says the 70-year-old philanthropist whose financial newsletter once reached 500,000 subscribers. “I prefer that money go to people who need it. I don’t think it’s rare. People do what satisfies them. This satisfies me.”
The philanthropist established a hunger center at URI in 1999. One of the center’s primary goals is to develop lifelong anti-hunger advocates by offering students a hunger studies minor that exposes them to hunger issues while providing opportunities for personal involvement through service learning activities, research and outreach. He also helped establish a child development center at the URI Providence Campus, named after his wife, Pat Feinstein, a child psychiatrist, and funds scholarships with a community service requirement for continuing education students.
As a former public school teacher, Feinstein understands the importance of self esteem. “Self esteem can be achieved by helping others. Children, as young as they are, can see that they can make a difference in someone’s life. And, when encouraged to do so, they respond enthusiastically,” says the father of three.
More than 95 percent of all elementary schoolchildren, representing every Rhode Island city and town, have participated in the “Feinstein Good Deeds” Program, which promotes the value of kindness. Teachers and children, encouraged by Feinstein, think out ways to help others and record those efforts in keepsake good deed journals provided by the philanthropist.
Here are other examples of Feinstein’s impact on schoolchildren:
• A “Youth Hunger Brigade” program involving more than 80 junior high and middle schools in Rhode Island encourages students to study hunger and design projects for their communities to combat it.
• More than 400 students are enrolled in Feinstein High School in Providence, the first public high school in the country where community service is an integral part of the curriculum.
• The Feinstein Enriching America Program is a mandatory course in community service at six Rhode Island higher education institutions including URI.
Looking back, Feinstein notes with pride the number of young people who have become committed to community service and fighting hunger from his efforts. “Now then, why would I want to trade in all that for a big house?”
By Jan Wenzel
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