It all started with a promise. It wasn’t Alex Sheen’s promise, but his father’s.
“My father was a man of his word. When he said he was going to be there for you, he showed up. My father was far from a perfect person, but he kept his promises.”
So, after his father died of cancer in 2012, Sheen quit his job at a software company and started because i said i would, a non-profit dedicated to continuing his father’s legacy and spreading the importance of keeping one’s word.
Seven years later, Sheen has distributed 9.81 million promise cards to 153 countries. More than 1,000 attendees at KSBA’s Annual Conference received the simple business-card sized piece of paper as they listened to Sheen’s story.
“Too often in this life people say I’ll get to it or tomorrow,” he said. “Well, I learned that one day there is no tomorrow.”
Sheen encourage those in attendance to a make promise to someone, write it on the card, give it to the person, and when the promise is complete, ask for it back.
“When it comes to keeping promises it seems like a lot of people don’t do that anymore,” he said. One of Sheen’s most important promises was to walk across the state of Ohio in honor of three women in Cleveland who were rescued after 10 years in captivity.
For most of the 240 miles, Sheen walked alone. But by the time he reached the home where the women were found, hundreds of people walked alongside him.
“I believe that when you have a strong why, you can be strong,” he said. “If you work hard enough for what you believe in, maybe others will pick up the cause that you believe in.”
Sheen urged the board members and educators to apply the concept to their work for students.
“In the education of our children, teaching them reading, writing, science, and math, that is all incredibly important,” he said. “But if we don’t teach our children how to be decent human beings to one another, then you tell me what the point of society is at all.”
As part of its mission, because i said i would, provides character education resources to teachers and schools to help children learn and practice concepts – including honesty, self-control and accountability.
Over the past six years, Sheen has spoken to more than 160,000 students including students at Marshall County High School where two students died in a 2018 shooting.
“To impact the world, our program will have to expand beyond myself,” he said. The nonprofit has started school chapters to help spread the importance of a promise. To date there are seven chapters with more on the way, Sheen said.
“It is a responsibility and a promise for somebody to look after these children,” he said. “It’s not one that our nonprofit takes lightly, nor should you.”