Giving people a hand up, not a handout
Story by Gracie Bonds Staples for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ali Jamal’s questions stopped Barbara Collins cold. Nearly a year had passed since her common-law husband, James, had succumbed to cancer. To cope, she drank Coors Light daily.
But in the months since he had worked the front desk at the Atlanta Hotel, trying to get his business Stablegold Hospitality off the ground, Jamal had seen something in Collins and this wasn’t it.
“She was sharp,” Jamal said recently. “She seemed like she had a lot of things she could bring to the table.”
Jamal [an Ismaili Muslim], a native of Vancouver, Canada, had seen other single mothers struggle to make ends meet but who were able to overcome their circumstances, including his own mother.
“I know firsthand her struggles on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
And so when he listened to Collins and the other tenants, many of them single mothers, he saw his own mother and the possibility for a brighter future.
“What are you doing?” he asked Collins that day.
“Are you serious?” Collins shot back.
“Get yourself together and I promise I will give you the opportunity to succeed.”
From that moment on, Barbara Collins’ life started to change. She took Jamal’s promise and, as he said, “ran with it.”
Collins’ story begins like that of so many other Americans — 63 percent have no emergency savings — who abruptly lose their jobs and end up homeless.
Read more about Ali Jamal’s efforts through his family-owned business, Stablegold Hospitality, at http://www.myajc.com/lifestyles/life-with-gracie-giving-people-hand-not-handout/K8mRXTqjQP3vYclGsuFVlO/
About Stablegold Hospitality: http://www.stablegoldhospitalityga.com/meet-our-people.html
Ismailimail 
Amazing work!
LikeLike