Within eight weeks he will have built his own app
Patrick McConlogue from New York City saw a homeless man every day on his way to work. One day he thought he would try something, offer him two options.
He approached him and told him that he would return the next day and: 1) either give him $100 cash, 2) or, if he wanted, instead of cash, he could give him three books on JavaScript programming languages (beginner, advanced, and expert) and a cheap laptop.
From the next day and whenever he felt ready, she could dedicate one hour a day - before going to work - for two months to teach him programming.
Journalists Caroline Moss and Robert Libetti from Business Insider decided to find him and ask him some questions about his move.
McConlogue told them he wanted to put the proverb "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. But if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.".
He claimed that he didn't think he could benefit from this whole story, but that he believed that the particular homeless man he saw every day was ready to take on this challenge.
The journalists went with him one day to see this original collaboration up close and with Leo's (the homeless man's) permission, they shot a video during their lesson.
Leo worked for an insurance company before becoming unemployed in 2011 and then homeless..
"New York is an expensive city," he commented, and said of the special offer he accepted: "$100 would have been enough for me for a few days. But I thought that having a laptop and learning to do something could perhaps offer me something more. It's not that I don't have the time to learn to do something new...".
Over the course of four weeks, the two men worked together every day, around 8 a.m., to create an app that should be perfected by the end of two months. Leo didn’t want to reveal the details of it, the report adds, as any smart entrepreneur would do. All he did reveal was that it was related to climate change and global warming.
After the class is over, Leo sits for another 3-4 hours reading and trying out the programming language on the Samsung Chromebook that McConlogue gave him.
"Patrick is my man," she said, and continued: "My life was full of good times before this happened to me. Now what I'm thinking is that maybe by learning to do something new, I have a better chance of... having those good times again.".
Source: newsbeast.gr
