One Dollar For Life - History

History

One Dollar For Life was founded in 2006 at Los Altos High School (Los Altos, California) during an economics class. The class was asked to devise a plan to help people around the world, and the idea of ODFL was born. “The average kid in our school contributed 93 cents each, but these kids put an average of $11 apiece into the box,” says Robert Freeman. “It made me cry because these were the poorest kids in the school. But they understood how important it is to help someone else.”

The organization became a reality in 2007 when students began campaigning within the school through a class-to-class speaking tour. Throughout the school year, they managed to raise $9,000 at Los Altos High School, which they used on the summer of 2007 in Kenya to build a schoolhouse, a project spearheaded by student president Mandeep Chahal, and advertised by student photographer Margaret Lewis.

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