How it all began … with a dream. The following is a copy of the original email Win first sent out to his friends to share his dream.

Since I was a boy, I have always dreamt of making a difference around me. Over the years, the dream has grown and time has come for me to act and make it become reality.

First, let’s step back in time. I was born in 1973 in Saigon, Vietnam. By the end of the Vietnam war, my father who was a Medical Doctor in the South Vietnamese army was sent to prison (so called “re-education camp”) by the communist regime and my mother was left to struggle alone with raising my older sister and me. While my father was in prison, my mother took us on a “boat people” trip to escape post-war communist Vietnam; this was with the hope to give my sister and me a brighter future; this ended disastrously with a pirate attack on our boat and our return to Vietnam, towed by a Soviet Union ship.

In 1982, shortly after my father’s release from prison (I was then 9 years old), I followed my parents as we immigrated to Belgium under the asylum status of political refugees. Growing up, I learned what it meant to be an immigrant and having to adapt to a new culture and language, and what hard work really means. My sister and I helped my Mother run a “boulangerie/patisserie” in Brussels while my Father went back to school, at the age of 42 to earn his medicine equivalency and therefore the right to practice medicine in Belgium.

I mostly grew up in Brussels and in 1997, I obtained my first degree to become a dentist, as I graduated from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Still thirsty for more knowledge, I decided to look into becoming a dental specialist and more specifically, a root canal specialist or endodontist. The specialty of endodontics not being very well developed in Europe, I decided to apply to endodontics programs in the USA. Facing fierce competition and despite others’ predictions that I would not be accepted into a US program, I still persevered and applied to 15 different programs. Of these, I only obtained 1 interview at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I entered the program in 1999 and graduated with a Master’s degree in 2001 under the mentorship of Dr. Andre Mickel. From 2001 through 2008, I taught as a full-time professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore (under Dr. Tom Dumsha’s guidance) and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. In October 2008, I started my own private practice called TCD Endodontics. In the last 6 years, I have worked day and night to grow the practice that now has developed into “Polaris Dental Specialists”, a multi-specialty dental practice, which offers endodontic and periodontic treatments, in multiple cities throughout the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

I often look back at the path I have taken since I was a boy and I consider myself very blessed with the many opportunities I have been given. I am grateful for all the advice and mentorship I have received from those who have helped me grow. Many times, I failed and yet I was given chances again and again despite my failures to get up so that I could keep “failing forward” (to quote Mike, one of my mentors). For all these years, I have nurtured the dream to “pay it forward” and give others their own chances to succeed themselves. It is now my turn to take the torch and give forward.

The project I am envisioning finds its roots in the fact that many of us have been given a talent that may be dormant within ourselves and that it will take the right environment before that talent can reveal itself. Almost like a good seed that awaits to be planted in good quality soil before it springs and burgeons into a tree, which in turn bears endless amounts of fruits. I believe that God has planted many talents across the world and that some of these talents would grow themselves into awesome stars while others would await the opportunity to flourish when and if given the chance of a better tomorrow. I believe in “second chances” as I myself have been given many chances (sometimes 3 or 4 times) before I could succeed at a specific task or endeavor. I believe in the sense of compassion and the need to share our blessings with others. The quote below is a good illustration of what I have in mind.

“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.”

Here follows another story that I have read over the years and that has fueled my enthusiasm to put my dream together.

“If the world population could be reduced to a village of 100 people and assuming that the proportions of all people on earth are maintained, then this village would be composed of…

…57 Asians

…21 Europeans

…14 Americans (North, Central and South altogether)

…8 Africans

There would be…

…52 women and 48 men

…30 white people and 70 non-white people

…30 Christians and 70 non-Christians

…89 heterosexuals and 11 homosexuals

…6 people who would own 59% of the globe’s total wealth and all would be from the US

…80 people who would live in inadequate housing

…70 of them who would be illiterate

…50 people who would suffer from malnutrition

…1 of them who would be dying

…1 of them who would be born

…1 person who would own a computer

…and 1 of them (yes only one!) who would have a University degree

If one considers the world from this angle, the need for tolerance and understanding then becomes very obvious

Take also the following into account…

…If you woke up this morning in good health, you are luckier than the million people who will not see next week

…if you have never known the danger of a battle, the loneliness of a prison, the agony of torture or the feeling of hunger, you are more blessed than 500 million other people

…if you can go to a religious gathering without the fear of being threatened, tortured or killed, you are more fortunate than 3 billion other persons

…if you have food in your refrigerator, clothing to protect you and a roof to live under, you own more than 75% of the inhabitants of this earth

…if your parents are still alive and married, you are a really rare person

…and finally, if you are reading this, that therefore means that you do not belong to the 2 billion people who can’t read

 

Therefore…

…work as if you did not need money

…dance as if nobody were watching you

…sing as if nobody were paying attention to you

…live as if heaven were on earth

…and give as if you did not expect anything in return”

So, here is my Dream … I would like to create a Foundation whose goal is to give to less fortunate children across the earth, the chance for a better tomorrow; for some, that would simply mean having clean water to use or a decent education while for some others, it would mean developing talents that have laid dormant in them.

Like any and many projects of this kind, ours would be faced with the same eternal problem of money that many others have faced before us. My hope is that this Foundation unlike others would operate more like a business but yet give like a Charity. The goal is to not be so dependent on asking the general public for charitable donations as there are already too many Foundations that are competing for a very limited pool of available money.

I have always wondered how much more impact a Foundation would have if it were operated like a business? What if we had people “INVEST” in the Foundation because they want to and not so much because they were asked to? What if this Foundation were a place where the money that pours in is multiplied in many folds over time?

At this point, you must be asking yourself how this could be realized. Here is what I have dreamt of…

The core of the project would rely on investing in hidden talents that would have never developed had they not been found. Again, the analogy would be like a seed that never finds the right soil or the proper weather conditions to grow. Could you imagine that there are hundreds or thousands “hidden stars” out there, in poor neighborhoods close to us, in the slums of Asia or somewhere in the confines of Africa? These “star” seeds may not even have enough in their current conditions to survive and see tomorrow. They may never live past their adolescence or even if they reach the adult age, they may not even know how to read. So, would it not be such a waste to know that these talents and potential prodigies would vanish and evaporate, simply because they were never found and given the chance to prove their talents?

Could you imagine how much impact our Foundation would have if it could build schools in impoverished areas across the world so that many more children, not as blessed with talents, would be allowed to have basic education? Going back to our analogy, it would be like finding a “super seed” that was hidden, water it and flourish it. The ensuing harvest would be so abundant that it would in turn allow means to water thousands and thousands other seeds (not all super seeds) that would have dried out had we not cared for them.

To illustrate the principles above, let’s use the example of tennis which as many of you know, I am very fond of. What if we had retired tennis professionals travel the globe to schools in impoverished areas and “spot” the “Rafa”, “Federer”, or “Serena” seeds that were buried there? What if we provided the proper soil and water to grow these seeds and gave them the chance to develop their talents? How about these young prodigies then reach the top 50 of the WTA or ATP Tour and then top 20 and then top 10? Would they not then “Pay Forward” themselves and help the Foundation provide for other children that are not as fortunate? Just imagine one of these kids playing at Roland Garros or the Australian Open and pledge his/her prize money to the Foundation that brought them there? How many fans would be behind that young boy or girl on the day of the Final and cheering for them? And what if one of our finalists asked for each person to donate a dollar and he/she would match the donations with another 10 or 100 dollars? How big of a “Financial Tsunami” would that create and how much more investment could we make into future generations?

Critics and “nay-sayers” would probably say that the chances for one of our kids to reach the top 10 would be non-existent. I, in return say to them that “success happens when preparation meets opportunity.” But then the “nay-sayers” would continue on and would say that even if our prodigies did in fact reach the top 10, they would probably quickly forget about giving back. Well, what if the majority of our successes gave even a little of their earnings and “Paid it Forward”? Wouldn’t that make its own impact? What if only a few of them really believed in the spirit of the Foundation and gave forward in large amounts, would that not fuel the Foundation to open more and more schools? I know that there are many other young tennis stars out there that are simply awaiting to be given the opportunity to pick up a racquet and hit that yellow ball.

Just imagine the many children who will be given the gift of basic education and who would grow into a balanced adult, have a job, found a family and spread the spirit of the Foundation, simply thanks to those few hidden talents that we uncovered. How much of a victory would that be?

But here is the culminating point and most exciting part of the whole venture! Just imagine how many lives we could touch if we were to not only look for young Rafas or Federers but also young Nobels, young Mother Teresas, young Gandhis, young Tiger Woods, young Bill Gates, young Flemings (who discovered penicillin), young Mozarts, young Ronaldos, and the list goes on. With the help of retired professionals or experts in each respective area of expertise, our Foundation would uncover all these hidden treasures and would nurture them into success. What if one of our kids were to be the one who discovers the cure against cancer, the one who would invent a green ecological source of energy to replace fossil fuel or simply grow to become a mom or dad who will teach their children basic core values onward?

We would name the Foundation the “Love All” Foundation. Not only it means we’d open our doors to all children without distinction but also, it would mean just as in tennis, that we all start fresh at the beginning of a new game when the score is at “love all.” One may have lost the game or even the set before but yet, a new game is about to start and anything is still possible. The “Love All” Foundation would then be a place of hope where a child can start a new page of their life no matter where they were born and the color of their skin. “Love All” would become the Foundation of second chances!

Like mentioned in the beginning, what matters most is not their forehand or how much spin they put in the ball, but rather the core values we teach them. These values will then prepare them to seize the right opportunity. They will equip each of these children to love and share with others. At “Love All” we don’t build tennis players, we first build people with compassion then awesome tennis prodigies; we don’t build cocky top-of-the-world superstars, we build “huge hearts.”

Obviously, we will need money to start this at a smaller scale first. But with your help and that of sponsors who believe in the vision, I know this could quickly grow into an extraordinary self-sustaining charitable body and organization, way beyond tennis. This could be something that will change the face of the earth.

To quote Mother Teresa, “We cannot do great things on this earth. We can only do small things with great love.”

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my Dream.

I sincerely hope we could build “Love All”, one child at a time, and build it together.

Sincerely,

Dr. Tuong Nguyen Nguyen AKA “Win Win”
Founder of Love All foundation