Not long after Reed Sandridge was laid off from his job at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., he remembered something his mother would say: When you're going through tough times, that's when you most need to give back. So last December, on the third anniversary of her death, Sandridge started giving away $10 a day to a different person for a year. As he writes on his Website, Sandridge acknowledges $10 won't change anyone's life, even the most down-and-out soul. But he believes that the act of giving will hopefully inspire others to pursue the ideals of altruism, whether because they receive $10 from Sandridge or from reading the stories of the people he's met since he began his project. So now the 36-year-old businessman's day job is walking around Washington, trying to convince people to take $10 from him. "I almost hesitate to name only a handful" of $10 recipients, Sandridge said, "because, really, every one of them is special." People, he said, have opened up to him and told him about suicide attempts, about drug addiction, about abuse in their past. As of today, Day 126 of the Year of Giving project, Sandridge has given away $1260 and met 126 people he never would have met otherwise.
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