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This is Satnya Ram Prasad Kersari.
He is 32 years old and he was a rickshaw driver until a jeep severely injured him in a hit-and-run accident. He has received no compensation and now needs crutches to walk and begs for a living. He makes about 50 rupees per day ($1). He is homeless and wishes he could marry and have a family.

Shyam Das and Sumara, two homeless men from Bihar. When asked what he would do with funds donated by 100 Friends Shyam Das said, "I'll eat. I haven't had much to eat because I've had no money." When asked about America he said, "America is a country that helps India."

INSPIRATION: Marc Gold & 100 Friends

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THEY WERE IN THE MOST HORRIFIC CONDITIONS...

LIZ: Has there ever been a time when you've given money and it wasn’t used as you intended?

MG: I’m sure. I’ve given away $30,000, which is over 1.5 million rupees. All I can do is act as wisely as I can. I mean, for example, my friend Thierry, I know him, I know the staff, I know the kids, he’s like a brother to me, he gives me a letter detailing where every rupee goes.

So last summer, he says to me, “Oh, you’ve got to meet this social worker, she’s in Khalighat, the Calcutta slum I was telling you about... And there's no AIDS information program—can you believe it? 2002 in Calcutta and these women have hardly any education. And the kids are in the house when their mothers are getting f*cked.

This social worker starts a program, working with the children of the sex workers, and with sex workers...from 6 to 10 at night, when most of the sex work occurs. She rents this space, and the kids get a hot meal, and there’s a nurse that comes, there’s teachers and they play games. They’re separated by age, so there’s the babies and the toddlers in one room, the 4-8 year olds in another. And she co-opted the neighborhood gang, and the gang provides security and they get a little stipend--it's this whole great program.

So I know her, her name is Urmi, through Thierry. So I don?t have to go through a big screening, because I completely trust him. Now I?ve gotten to know Urmi, I know about her project, I know about her staff.

Probably, if I go to Calcutta this summer, which I usually do, Urmi will say, "Oh, you gotta meet so-and-so." And if fact, Urmi took me to see David, who has a house with eight kids with like, Cerebral Palsy, and things like that. The kids, they were in the most horrific conditions, on the street, in the train station. Now they're learning computers. So you can see how one thing leads to another kind of thing.

Theres’s a certain amount of repeat business, but you just learn how to do it—you’ll see when you get out there.

IN AMERICA THEY DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR CASTE IS...

LIZ: I’m curious, since you travel a fair amount, if you have any perspective on what the attitude of the rest of the world is toward America? Especially in regard to whether it has changed since 9-11 or since the Iraq crisis?

MG: Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that. One thing is: I met people, for example, in Tibet last summer, never heard of September 11th.

Or, one guy who said, “Didn’t a helicopter crash into a village?”

I had to laugh, I said, “Well, sort of.” And bunch of people, they felt sorry for America.

Two, no matter what you read in the press, not only are there still a lot of positive feelings about Americans, but the American Dream is an International Dream.

I have a unique perspective: not only am I out there doing my project, but I’m a community college counselor... You know what that means? That means every week I meet somebody who says, often through a translator, “I just got off the plane two days ago from the refugee camp in Thailand or in Cambodia, and they told me, 'Go to City College' and I don’t know how to say 'Hello' but I’m here at City College.”

And I see some of these kids end up six years later graduating from the Engineering Program in Berkeley, getting a job for 100K working for CalTrans building overpasses—I’ve seen it.

So there is that part of it. For most of the really poor people, they don’t know about geopolitics, they’ve just heard that America is a place where all the people are mixed up together, and that you can work in McDonald’s and what I make in a week, you can make in one hour. And that you can have a chance there, and they don’t care what your caste is.

As you go up the educational ladder, then I get challenged sometimes, and sometimes I don’t want to deal with it and I say I’m Canadian, because I don’t want to discuss the American Government with every single person I meet.

And sometimes I will definitely own it—for example when I was in Turkey, I met a lot of people, very critical, and mostly I just listened. But finally I met one kid who was very, very critical [of America] but not at all of the Turkish government.

So I said to him, “Listen, I’m going to tell you five things that I am very critical of America for...” And I discussed the environment, and the corporations and Viet Nam and a number of other things.

“Now I’m going to tell you five things I’m proud of…” And I talked about Kosovo, which I feel pretty good about, overall, considering what was going on there. And I talked about some of the foreign aid stuff that we do, and I talked about civil rights progress.

And then I said, “Now, can you do that about Turkey?”

And he couldn’t do it. He knew the things he was proud of, but he wouldn’t talk about the Armenians or he wouldn’t talk about the Kurds, or he wouldn’t talk about the poverty, you know.

Kamal now has a home, and a business, in Nepal.

WE HAVE A LOT AND YOU HAVE A LITTLE...

So all I can say is there is still a lot of good will out there, even now. I met a guy once, he was from Kerala in Southern India—there’s a lot of people from that area who go work in the Persian Gulf. This guy comes up to me because he knew who I was through the hotel guy.

“Oh, you American!” Big smile, he says, “I love George Bush!” (this is George Bush, Sr.)

“You love George Bush?” and I’m thinking. “The Republicans don’t love George Bush.”

“Why do you love George Bush?”

He said. “We had nothing. Then my brother got a job in Dubai. He made a fortune. I got maybe $15,000.” He said, “We got nice house, motor scooter, television, kids go to school, doctor, nice clothes—everybody happy.” Then his eyes narrowed.

I said, “What happened then?”

“Saddam Hussein go to Kuwait, everything ruined, lose jobs, now we have nothing!”

Then he smiles and says, “Then, Great George Bush comes and he says, 'I draw a line in the sand, you must not cross, go back to Kuwait!'”

“And then Saddam goes back, and then we get jobs, and everybody happy! And I love George Bush!”

I had to say to myself, “O,K., he doesn’t know any of the politics, but to him George Bush is a hero, I can’t take it away from him!”

So you never know what kind of a slant someone is going to have on something. I didn’t have the heart to say to him, “Well, it’s not as simple as that…”

So everyone’s got a slant, and I just try to give it some balance, but you know, there’s something about saying, “Forget the government, I’m representing roughly a hundred people who give, ordinary Americans who realize that we have a lot and you have a little, so you can now get this medicine for your T.B. and not die.”

And that’s enough. So when Brad Newsham uses the word “ambassador” that’s a great word.

So, what else can I tell you?

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