Delawarean Sam Beard has spent more than 50 years in public service and has developed inner city job creation programs with several U.S Presidents.
He also co-founded The Jefferson Awards Foundation a nonprofit group that honors top achievements in public service.
The foundation also has several additional programs designed to train and empower individuals to serve and lead in their communities. In 2010, Sam Beard created "Jefferson Awards Global Changers." The Wilmingtonian says the aim is to train young people in leadership and service. The program operates in high schools across the country including in Delaware.
At 76, Beard shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, he's just launched a new nonprofit called GIFT, based on his latest passion, discovering the untapped capacity of our minds through meditation and mindfulness.
“There are capacities we have in our mind which really should be explored and then put to constructive use,” he says. “I think we have the potential of elevating human behavior and that’s a valuable goal of where I think meditation can lead.”
Beard also believes kids at risk can better cope with the stress of growing up in violent neighborhoods by using meditation.
“In New York, they’ve trained over 300,000 inner city kids in transcendental meditation,” he says. “They’re proving that absenteeism goes down, graduation from high school goes up and that the academic grades go up significantly. Meditation is a significant healing tool.”
You can learn more at globalinvestmentfoundation.org